Overview
The following article covers what's new in our Cabernet Franc release (beginning in February 2024) to provide a detailed understanding of what's changing, how new features work, how to enable them and any additional factors your team should consider. If you're new to Practifi or our release documentation, please review our best practices for 📚 Using Practifi Release Notes.
With Cabernet Franc, we're adding several enhancements to Deliverables and introducing Flow Builder as a way to build Active Forms in Practifi.
- Release Highlights
- Resolved Issues
- Cabernet Franc Minor Release - March 2024
- Change Log
Release Highlights
Deliverable Enhancements
Since the initial release of Deliverables in 2021, we’ve seen many firms integrate them into their practice. These power users have given us a lot of insightful feedback on how to make Deliverables even better. With this release, we're putting that feedback into action.
In case you need a refresher on Deliverables, they're recurring client entitlements that are associated with Service Types. They're marked as fulfilled when Tasks are completed or Events take place. An example of a Deliverable might be an annual review your firm performs for clients as part of your investment management services. Deliverable Types are configured by Practifi Administrators in the Settings app.
This release enables new options for how Deliverables can be fulfilled, how they're assigned, what happens when they're overdue and more. Making use of these improvements can help your firm get even more value out of Deliverables.
Fulfillment Activities
The current usage model for Deliverables provides teams with total flexibility over which Tasks and Events are used to fulfill them. While this works well for some teams, others would prefer it if the activity that fulfilled the Deliverable was created for them. This release makes that possible with fulfillment activities, giving firms the option to specify a clearly defined set of work items assigned to the right people at the right time.
To enable this feature, System Administrators can define a Deliverable’s fulfillment activity in the Settings app by checking the Auto Create Fulfillment Activities box. Fulfillment activities can be a simple reminder Task, a Task Template or a Task within a larger Process.
To learn more about configuring fulfillment activities for Deliverables, please see our 📚 Creating and Managing Deliverables article.
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🔧 Implementation Details The below product areas have changed as a part of delivering these enhancements. If you’ve customized them, you won’t receive the changes automatically. A copy of the updated item will be made available in your Practifi instance. You can either replicate the changes or switch to the updated item and replicate your customizations. |
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| Product Area | What’s Changed? |
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Deliverable record page |
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Deliverable Type record page |
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Sidebar Improvements
Fulfilling Deliverables using the sidebar within a Task or Event record now follows a clearer process with new management capabilities and an updated look and feel. Fulfilling a Deliverable still involves selecting it within the sidebar, but these Deliverables now appear in a section called Available for Fulfillment. When a user selects a Deliverable, it's moved into a new section called Marked for Fulfillment.
This is because we’ve split the fulfillment process in two: first, the user marks the Deliverable for fulfillment and then the Deliverable is fulfilled automatically when the Task is completed or the Event takes place. The previous method would fulfill the Deliverable immediately, leading to a mismatch between fulfillment and activity completion that made reporting less accurate.
Here are some other new features in the sidebar:
- Users can click a Delete icon to take a Deliverable out of the Marked for Fulfillment section before fulfillment is finalized. This moves the Deliverable back to the Available for Fulfillment section.
- Hovering the mouse over the info icon next to the Deliverable’s name lets the user view a description of the Deliverable, if one has been added at the Deliverable Type level.
- If a Deliverable is overdue, then its Due Date badge appears in red.
For Deliverables that are fulfilled or marked as fulfilled, a new Update Fulfillment Date icon allows users to change the fulfillment date if it happened on a different day than the one when the Task was completed or the Event took place.
Please note: The availability of the Update Fulfillment Date icon is dependent on the Allow Fulfillment Date to be Modified setting on the Deliverable Type record. Practifi Administrators can make fulfillment dates editable on open Deliverables, all Deliverables or not at all. For more information, please see our 📚 Creating and Managing Deliverables article.
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🔧 Implementation Details The below product areas have changed as a part of delivering these enhancements. If you’ve customized them, you won’t receive the changes automatically. A copy of the updated item will be made available in your Practifi instance. You can either replicate the changes or switch to the updated item and replicate your customizations. |
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| Product Area | What’s Changed? |
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Deliverable record page |
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Deliverable Type record page |
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Assignment Settings for Deliverable Types
We're extending the same flexible assignment logic to Deliverables that we currently use with Process Tasks, allowing administrators to distribute ownership of Deliverables across team members.
When configuring a Deliverable Type in the Settings app, you can use the new Assignment Type field to control who the Deliverables will be assigned to. The available options are:
- Service Owner
- Deliverable Type Owner
- Entity Owner
- Role
- Business Role
For more details on how the Assignment Type setting works, please see our 📚 Understanding Deliverables article.
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🔧 Implementation Details The below product areas have changed as a part of delivering these enhancements. If you’ve customized them, you won’t receive the changes automatically. A copy of the updated item will be made available in your Practifi instance. You can either replicate the changes or switch to the updated item and replicate your customizations. |
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| Product Area | What’s Changed? |
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Advisor and Client Service app Home page |
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Compliance app Home page |
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Overdue Deliverables
The current way of handling a missed Deliverable is to mark it as missed and recalculate the next due date. With this release, we're introducing overdue Deliverables and exceptions to give you more ways to record a Deliverable’s outcome.
For Deliverables that always need to be fulfilled regardless of whether they're on time or not, system administrators now have the option of keeping them open until a user fulfills them. Deliverables that remain open beyond their due date become overdue. This means their due dates appear in red in the sidebar assistant and are recorded as having been fulfilled late when they’re eventually completed.
We've added a new field to the Deliverable Type record called If It Isn't Fulfilled By Its Due Date. This field has two options:
- Treat it as missed and recalculate the due date
- Treat it as overdue
The first option is the existing handling method and is the default option applied to existing Deliverables and newly created ones. Selecting the second option enables a Deliverable to become overdue.
On the Deliverable record, we’ve replaced the existing Fulfilled checkbox with a new field called Outcome, which has more tracking options available:
- Fulfilled On Time
- Fulfilled Late
- Missed
- Excepted
Deliverables fulfilled when overdue are given an outcome of Fulfilled Late. All existing fulfillment records will have the Outcome field updated automatically as part of the release process.
Users can track overdue Deliverables with two new Home page tiles: My overdue deliverables and Overdue deliverables for my clients. These have been added to the My Alerts & Exceptions tile row in the Advisor and Client Service apps, while the Compliance app has just the Overdue deliverables for my clients tile.
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🔧 Implementation Details The below product areas have changed as a part of delivering these enhancements. If you’ve customized them, you won’t receive the changes automatically. A copy of the updated item will be made available in your Practifi instance. You can either replicate the changes or switch to the updated item and replicate your customizations. |
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| Product Area | What’s Changed? |
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Deliverable record page |
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Deliverable Type record page |
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Exceptions
Sometimes a Deliverable is missed for good reason and shouldn’t be factored into your firm's client service metrics. For example, an advisor might have been unable to meet with a client who was out of the country for an extended period of time. To account for situations like this, we’ve introduced exceptions for Deliverables. The new Mark as Exception action appears as a mass action and row action on every list of Deliverable Fulfillment records in Practifi.
You'll find the Mark as Exception action on the Fulfillment tab on the Deliverable record page, we’ve also introduced record lists in additional places to give you more options for updating at scale. On Client records, the Mark as Exception option is available as a row action and mass action on the Deliverable Fulfillment subtab within the Services & Pipeline section.
For marking Deliverables as exceptions in bulk, we've added a new Deliverable Fulfillments page in the Data Management app.
Please note: The Deliverable Fulfillments page is not added to the Data Management app navigation by default. For instructions on adding this page, please see our 📚 Enabling Deliverables article.
Because the ability to mark Deliverables as exceptions is an impactful one, we’ve added some additional control layers to the feature:
- Users must have the Manage Exceptions permission set assigned in order to see the Mark as Exception action.
- The Outcome field appears as read-only on the Deliverable Fulfillment record page.
- When marking a Deliverable as an exception, the user must provide a reason.
- The Excepted By field captures the user who recorded the exception, allowing you to monitor historical activity.
To grant access to the Mark as Exception action, assign the Manage Exceptions permission set to the relevant users or permission set groups and they’ll see the action in the above locations. Practifi Administrators can assign the Manage Exceptions permission set from the Additional Features page in the Settings app. For more information, please see our 📚 Enabling Deliverables article.
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🔧 Implementation Details The below product areas have changed as a part of delivering these enhancements. If you’ve customized them, you won’t receive the changes automatically. A copy of the updated item will be made available in your Practifi instance. You can either replicate the changes or switch to the updated item and replicate your customizations. |
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| Product Area | What’s Changed? |
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Client record page |
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Data Management app |
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Related - Deliverable Fulfillment record list component |
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Updates to Standard Reports
To take advantage of the additional outcomes available, we’ve updated the following reports:
- Fulfill. % by Division, Owner & Type YTD
- Fulfillment % by Owner YTD
- Fulfillment % by Service Type & AUM YTD
These reports all use a "fulfillment rate" calculation to determine how well clients are being serviced. This calculation is now performed by taking the sum of Deliverable Fulfillment records fulfilled on time and dividing it by the total number of Fulfillment records that aren’t marked as exceptions.
Please note: When the updated Fulfill. % by Division, Owner & Type YTD, Fulfillment % by Owner YTD and Fulfillment % by Service Type & AUM YTD reports are added to your Practifi organization, they will appear alongside the older versions of the same name. Check the Created On column on the Reports page to be sure you are accessing the latest version.
Deactivating Deliverables
To ensure that Deliverables don’t continue to be generated when they’re no longer needed, we’ve added some new capabilities:
- A Status field on the Deliverable record allows users to deactivate individual Deliverables within an active Service.
- A Cancel Service button on the Service record page and all record lists that display active Services deactivates all Deliverables within one or more Service at once.
- An updated Mark as Lost Client action deactivates all Deliverables related to that client.
For more information on deactivating Deliverables, please see our 📚 Creating and Managing Deliverables article.
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🔧 Implementation Details The below product areas have changed as a part of delivering these enhancements. If you’ve customized them, you won’t receive the changes automatically. A copy of the updated item will be made available in your Practifi instance. You can either replicate the changes or switch to the updated item and replicate your customizations. |
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| Product Area | What’s Changed? |
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My Active Services record lists in the Advisor, Client Service, Compliance and Team Member apps |
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Related - Services record list component |
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Sync with Services
We've made it easier to adjust Deliverable defaults and push them to clients. The Sync with Services action on the Service Type record page, an updated version of the previous Send Deliverables to Services action, not only creates Deliverables where they didn’t previously exist but also updates existing ones to align them with the changes you’ve made.
When using the Sync with Services action, you will have the option of updating only those Deliverables that have not been customized at the client level or all Deliverables of that type.
Deliverable Descriptions
We’ve added a Description field on Deliverable Type records so Practifi Administrators can provide a more detailed explanation of a Deliverable’s purpose and any other instructions relating to it. Users can view this description on the Deliverable record page or by hovering over the info icon next to a Deliverable in the side panel of a Task or Event record.
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🔧 Implementation Details The below product areas have changed as a part of delivering these enhancements. If you’ve customized them, you won’t receive the changes automatically. A copy of the updated item will be made available in your Practifi instance. You can either replicate the changes or switch to the updated item and replicate your customizations. |
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| Product Area | What’s Changed? |
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Deliverable record page |
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Deliverable Type record page |
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Deliverable Statuses
Imagine you have a Deliverable Type that's still under construction or is about to be phased out. You'll now have a way to stop those Deliverables from appearing on new Services going forward. The new Status field on the Deliverable Type record has three options:
- Draft
- Active
- Inactive
Only Deliverable Types with a status of Active are copied across to new Services. Those marked as Draft or Inactive are skipped over. For more information on Deliverable statuses, please see our📚 Creating and Managing Deliverables article.
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🔧 Implementation Details The below product areas have changed as a part of delivering these enhancements. If you’ve customized them, you won’t receive the changes automatically. A copy of the updated item will be made available in your Practifi instance. You can either replicate the changes or switch to the updated item and replicate your customizations. |
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| Product Area | What’s Changed? |
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Deliverable Type record page |
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Control Access to Deliverables
With all the ways Deliverables can be configured, your firm might want to limit who can edit their settings. As of this release, users will only be able to edit the Name and Description fields on Deliverables by default. Users will need to be assigned the new Manage Deliverable Settings permission set to gain full access to Deliverable and Deliverable Type records. Users will also need this additional permission set in order to fulfill Deliverables.
Like the Manage Exceptions permission set, the Manage Deliverable Settings permission set can be assigned to permission set groups and users from the Additional Features page in the Settings app.
Please note: As part of the upgrade to Cabernet Franc, the new Practifi - Deliverables - Manage Deliverable Settings permission set will be added for existing users who previously had the Practifi - Deliverables User permission set assigned, as well as to the Administrator, Super User and Standard User default permission set groups if the Practifi - Deliverables User permission set had been added previously.
If your firm has customized permission sets, you might need to assign users at your organization who work with Deliverables both the Deliverables User and Manage Deliverable Settings permission sets after the upgrade to Cabernet Franc. For instructions on assigning these permission sets, please see our 📚 Enabling Deliverables article.
Flow Builder for Active Forms
The introduction of Active Forms in our Albariño release gave firms a way to deliver dynamic data capture in their workflows. While Active Forms were a huge step forward, there were still some complex scenarios they were unable to handle.
This release addresses the complexity problem by enabling Salesforce’s Flow Builder as an alternative way to build Active Forms. Flow Builder is Salesforce’s premier process automation tool, bringing powerful capabilities into Practifi workflows.
The Flow Builder Advantage
Beyond just handling greater complexity, Flow Builder offers a number of benefits. Here are a few examples of the additional functionality available with Flow Builder:
- Performing actions automatically while progressing through form screens.
- Looping through the same screen multiple times to perform multiple actions.
- Additional UI elements such as dependent picklists, sliders and toggle switches.
- Support for the wide range of Flow Screen Components available from the AppExchange and other third-party sources.
- Extensive testing and debugging capabilities.
- Access to a wide range of Flow Builder training material like this Trailhead trail.
Accessing Flow Builder
When you want to add an Active Form to a Process Task or Task Template, the new Configure this task’s Active Form with picklist allows you to select either Form Elements (the existing configuration method) or Flow Builder.
Selecting Flow Builder hides the lists of Active Form Screens, Sections, Fields, Tables and other records that typically appear in the Active Form tab and replaces them with the objects required to configure an Active Form using Flow Builder:
- Active Form Flows: Each entry in this object represents a Screen Flow that appears on the Task record page.
- Active Form Variables: Each entry in this object represents a variable from the Flow that you want to make use of outside of the Flow, e.g. as a field in the action that creates the next task in the workflow.
End User Experience
Just as with current Active Forms, Active Forms built with Flow Builder are surfaced to users in the following areas within Practifi:
- Start a Process action
- New Task (from template) action
- Active Form tab on Task records
- Mark as Complete action for Tasks
The appearance of the forms themselves is slightly different, due both to the way Flow Builder presents screens and because there are more ways to control a form’s look and feel.
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🔧 Implementation Details The below product areas have changed as a part of delivering these enhancements. If you’ve customized them, you won’t receive the changes automatically. A copy of the updated item will be made available in your Practifi instance. You can either replicate the changes or switch to the updated item and replicate your customizations. |
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| Product Area | What’s Changed? |
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Active Form Assignment record page |
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Active Form Task Settings record page |
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Process Task record page |
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Custom Table Component for Screen Flows
Flow Builder's Screen Flows do a lot of things well, but they're limited when it comes to creating multiple records at once. We introduced a way to update and create multiple records with Active Form Tables in our Petit Verdot release. With the enablement of Flow-based Active Forms in this release, we’ve brought the same editable table capabilities to Flow Builder.
We've created a custom component called Practifi - Data Table (Dynamic Rows) to let you easily add a table when building a Screen Flow.
Resolved Issues
- Microsoft Email Sync duplication issues: Resolved a problem with Microsoft Email Sync where duplicate email records were being created on a Client record where multiple users were CC’d on the same email.
- Feed posts with #Topic: Feed posts tagged with #Topics would show a "null" tag in place of the Topic's actual mention.
- Chatter Group on Feed replies: Fixed an issue that was preventing users from tagging Chatter Groups in Feed replies.
- HTML tags displayed in Feed posts: When editing an existing Feed post or replying to a post, HTML tags would display rather than the intended formatting. To resolve this issue, we have removed the additional Rich Text editor buttons to make them consistent with the standard Feed editor.
- Active Forms fix for Create an Event workflow action: When attempting to use a multi-record lookup field to create Event Attendees within the Create an Event workflow action, an error message appeared upon task completion: Invalid conversion from runtime type String to List<ANY>.
- Active Form Pinned Field fix: A number of clients were reporting record-locking issues and tasks not completing as expected when using Pinned Fields with Active Forms. Pinned Fields will now be saved in a separate asynchronous transaction to minimize potential record locking.
- Component Error fixes: Resolved some seemingly unrelated issues where users were encountering a Component Error on login or were timed out when completing a task. The problem stemmed from exceeding a limit in our managed package.
- Reassign Task Ownership fix: Some users were seeing Task Trigger errors when reassigning Task ownership for a large number of Tasks over a short period of time. We adjusted the Apex callback limits for the Task object to track only simplified messages rather than the entire object.
- Entity Change Owner fix: Some users were reporting an error when using the Change Owner action for an Entity/Household. A race condition (i.e. a conflict between which process gets executed first) between the need to access records by the running user versus completion of sharing rule calculation time was most likely the cause of this issue. We have updated the change owner logic to run in the system context to overcome the race condition.
- Edit Preview from tiles: Resolved an issue when editing the Due Date of Tasks directly from a tile list view. The preview screen would display a date one day prior to the intended date, although the correct date was retained on the final save.
- Activities quick button fix: A number of clients reported an issue when navigating a record via navigation icons. They would land on the correct page, but the header would appear at the bottom of the page instead of the top.
- Update to Retry Action capabilities: Previously, when Actions associated with a Task’s completion failed to fire, perhaps due to configuration or external reasons such as a network outage, the remaining Actions were halted and the user was presented with an option to retry.
- Where the failure to run the Action is due configuration of the Task Template or Active Form, we continue to recommend reverting the Task Status back from Completed, updating the configuration, then completing the Task again to ensure the Actions fire.
- Where the failure is due to an external cause that has since been rectified, such as a network outage, the Retry button will now only run Actions that failed and will no longer attempt to rerun all Actions.
Cabernet Franc Minor Release - March 2024
The following changes were rolled out in an update in early March 2024:
- Use Active Form fields to update another field on the same Task: We resolved an issue with the Save to Related Record action on Process Tasks where you could not update another field on the same Task. For example, you can now enter data into an Active Form field and map that value to the corresponding field on the Basics page for the same Task.
- Please note: For the Save to Related Record Action Type, only two of the three available Record Location methods will allow this:
- How Will the Record Be Located? = Preset lookup via Record Path and Record path = Id
- How Will the Record Be Located? = Active Form lookup
- Preset lookup via Target picklists is not compatible
- Please note: For the Save to Related Record Action Type, only two of the three available Record Location methods will allow this:
- Deliverable issues after upgrade: The following issues with Deliverables were addressed:
- Deliverable Reminder tasks were not being generated due to a background attribute not being updated as part of the release deployment. We recommend running the My Missed Deliverables by Client YTD report to identify any potentially missed deliverables between the dates of the Cabernet Franc release (mid-February 2024 for most organizations) and the application of the fix (early March 2024).
- Last Fulfillment date not displaying: The previous behavior was for the Last Fulfillment date to be set to null if a Deliverable was missed, however, this could also set previous iterations that were fulfilled to null. All Last Fulfillment dates have been recovered. Going forward, with the Cabernet Franc release you are now able to mark Deliverables as Missed. The Last Fulfillment date from the most recent fulfillment will populate regardless of any recent missed due dates.
- Some users were unable to mark a Deliverable as fulfilled due to Access Control settings restricting fulfillment to specific users. Access control limitations specified that only the Task's owner and Servicing Team members specified in the Task's settings could modify Active Form fields, complete checklist items and mark Tasks as complete. Only the Task or Event owner, the related Entity owner or members of the related Entity's Servicing Team had the authority to fulfill Deliverables associated with the Task or Event. We have relaxed the controls to allow any user who can complete the Task to mark Deliverables for fulfillment.
- Please note: We recommend users complete Tasks using the Mark as Complete action rather than using the Status field on the Task record.
- Please note: We recommend users complete Tasks using the Mark as Complete action rather than using the Status field on the Task record.
- Deliverables that are configured to be fulfilled by a specific Task are not fulfilled if the related Task is canceled rather than completed. This happens because automation for Deliverables is only triggered when a Task is marked as complete. This is a known issue that will not be resolved until a future release. A fix is currently scheduled for our Pinot Blanc release in July 2024. In the meantime, manual intervention is needed to reactivate the Deliverable and fulfill it using other related activities.
- Topic error fix for My Division's People list view: Some non-admin users were encountering a Filter Set Component error when filtering by Topic on the My Division’s People list view. There were also reports of a page crash when adding or removing a Topic from the filter. This fix resolves both issues.
- Please note: This fix is only for the standard Practifi (non-modified) filter of the Client List component. If your organization has a modified version of this component, you may still encounter this error. Please contact Practifi Support if you encounter this error and require assistance applying the Topic Filter fix to any customized component.
- Please note: This fix is only for the standard Practifi (non-modified) filter of the Client List component. If your organization has a modified version of this component, you may still encounter this error. Please contact Practifi Support if you encounter this error and require assistance applying the Topic Filter fix to any customized component.
- Chatter Feed on Entity display fix: We resolved an issue where clients who had transitioned to the Salesforce Lightning version of Practifi were not seeing historical Feed posts. The posts were still visible via the back end but not displayed in the Practifi UI. We have updated the Feed retrieval query so that all posts are retrieved and displayed as expected.
- Division Dashboard AUM display fix: We fixed a display issue where the total client AUM tile on the Division record dashboard would display in an unexpected format or as a negative number. This issue only occurred for the ultimate or top parent Division. Child Divisions were not impacted.
- Client Entity record Email and Phone fix: We resolved an issue where the Email and Phone fields on Client Entity records were not being retained. Client Households and Client Organizations are not affected, as they are read-only and reflect values based on their respective Preferred Email and Preferred Phone settings.
Change Log
Each of the features and enhancements in this release that modify configurable product areas describes the affected areas in their section of the release notes. This section consolidates each of those into a singular table, making it easier to get a sense of the release’s changes as a whole.
| 🔧 Implementation Details The below product areas have changed as a part of delivering these enhancements. If you’ve customized them, you won’t receive the changes automatically. A copy of the updated item will be made available in your Practifi instance. You can either replicate the changes or switch to the updated item and replicate your customizations. |
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| Product Area | Feature/Enhancement | What's Changed? |
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Active Form Assignment record page |
Flow Builder for Active Forms |
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| Active Form Task Settings record page
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Flow Builder for Active Forms |
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Advisor app Home page |
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Client record page |
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Client Service app Home page |
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Compliance app Home page |
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Data Management app |
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Deliverable record page
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Deliverable Type record page
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My Active Services record lists in the Advisor, Client Service, Compliance and Team Member apps |
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Process Task record page |
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Related - Deliverable Fulfillment record list component |
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Related - Services record list component |
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