Events Management Release Highlights 22R1

This video provides an in-depth exploration of the latest enhancements and innovations in Veeva CRM Events Management from its 22R1 release. Presented by Krista McBrarity, Director of Events Management Product at Veeva CRM, and her team, the webinar details key features across three strategic investment areas: Digital Enablement, Global Compliance, and User Experience. The primary objective is to equip pharmaceutical and life sciences companies with tools to streamline event planning and execution, ensure regulatory adherence, and enhance the overall efficiency and satisfaction of field users and event organizers.

The presentation systematically walks through each investment area, starting with Digital Enablement. This section focuses on improving the seamless planning and execution of events, particularly highlighting advancements in email validation rules for offline use on iPads. The discussion then transitions to Global Compliance, where new business rules and attachment management features are introduced to help organizations enforce best practices and meet evolving regulatory standards, such as those from updated pharma codes of ethics. Finally, the User Experience segment showcases significant redesigns for the iPad interface, including an enhanced events home page and a dedicated speaker tab, alongside an early preview of Events Management within the Salesforce Lightning Experience for online users.

Throughout the webinar, specific examples and live demonstrations are used to illustrate the practical application and benefits of each new feature. For instance, the improved validation rules are shown to ensure consistency between online and offline operations, even for complex scenarios like sending emails to out-of-territory contacts. The compliance features demonstrate how the system can automatically warn users about repeat attendees consuming meals for the same topic or prevent modifications to attachments once an event is closed. The user experience demos highlight how field reps can more intuitively navigate event lists, search for specific events, and make informed decisions about speakers by accessing comprehensive profiles directly within the CRM. The preview of the Lightning experience emphasizes a modern, tab-based interface designed for quick preview, entry, and navigation, aligning Veeva CRM with Salesforce's latest platform.

Key Takeaways:

• Veeva's Strategic Investment Areas: The Events Management roadmap is focused on Digital Enablement (seamless planning, execution, automated reminders, QR check-in), Global Compliance (expanding business rules engine for regulatory adherence), and User Experience (streamlining the end-to-end event journey).
• Enhanced Email Validation Rules: The 22R1 release brings consistency to validation rules for emails sent from events, now running online and offline (iPad). This enables new functionality, such as reliably sending emails to out-of-territory contacts with validation, and provides an improved user experience for encountering validation errors.
• Compliance for Attendee Meals: A new configurable business rule allows administrators to warn users when attendees consume too many meals for a specific topic. This directly addresses updated pharma codes of ethics that prohibit repeat attendance on different topics where a meal was consumed, ensuring compliance.
• Automated Attachment Locking: To enhance data integrity and compliance, attachments for locked events (e.g., closed or canceled) can no longer be uploaded, edited, or deleted. Users can still view existing documents, ensuring an audit trail while preventing unauthorized modifications. This works for both Salesforce Classic attachments and Lightning files.
• Redesigned iPad Events Home Page: The iPad interface now features a timeline-based home page that distinctly separates upcoming and past events. This allows users to focus on preparation or closeout activities, with improved visibility of key information like speakers and topics, and enhanced search and filter capabilities.
• Dedicated Speaker Tab on iPad: A new speaker tab provides a centralized location for field users to view available speakers, their profiles, eligibility, training qualifications, and availability. This helps organizers make informed decisions before planning an event, reducing frustration and reliance on external reports. The displayed attributes are fully customizable.
• Early Access to Lightning Experience: Veeva CRM Events Management is now available in early access for the Salesforce Lightning Experience, migrating key functionalities such as event page layouts, workflows, team members, budgets, estimates, speakers, and materials. This offers a modern, browser-based interface.
• Lightning UI Features: The new Lightning experience introduces a modal style for creating and editing records, a standard Lightning record page view with configurable highlight panels (up to 10 fields), and related lists displayed as tabs rather than stacked views, all while respecting existing page layout engine configurations.
• Efficient Multi-Record Entry: The "Save and New" button has been added to Lightning related lists (e.g., budget, team members, expense estimates), allowing users to quickly enter multiple related records without navigating in and out of pages, significantly improving efficiency.
• Improved Speaker Selection in Lightning: In the Lightning UI, speaker selection is presented in a table view, allowing users to search, filter, and sort by various configurable speaker fields. It also shows all speakers (eligible, ineligible, nominated, expired) for comprehensive visibility, with checkboxes enabled only for eligible speakers.
• Expense Estimates in Lightning: The expense estimates feature in Lightning automatically defaults to the selected event budget and allows users to easily select expense types and enter estimated amounts, with the total estimated cost reflected on the event record.

Tools/Resources Mentioned:

• Veeva CRM Events Management (product)
• iPad (platform for offline functionality)
• Salesforce Classic / Lightning Experience (CRM platforms)
• Veeva Community Portal (for release notes, announcements)
• Veeva Online Help Documentation (for detailed feature descriptions, configuration instructions)
• Veeva Events Hub (for on-demand webinars, innovation guides)

Key Concepts:

• Digital Enablement: Focus on leveraging technology to make event planning and execution seamless and efficient.
• Global Compliance: Adhering to industry regulations and best practices, including updated pharma codes of ethics, through system controls.
• User Experience (UX): Designing interfaces and workflows that are intuitive, efficient, and satisfying for end-users (field reps, event organizers).
• Validation Rules (Online/Offline): System-defined rules that enforce business processes, now with improved consistency between connected and disconnected environments.
• Business Rules Engine: A configurable system that allows organizations to define and enforce specific compliance and operational rules.
• Page Layout Engine: Veeva CRM's configuration system that determines the layout, fields, and buttons visible to users based on their profile and record status.
• Enhanced Interface Mode: A custom setting in Veeva CRM that enables the new iPad user experience features like the enhanced home page and speaker tab.

Examples/Case Studies:

• Out-of-Territory Email Validation: A common scenario where field reps need to send emails to contacts outside their assigned territory, now supported with consistent offline validation rules on the iPad.
• Attendee Meal Compliance: A specific business rule preventing a doctor from attending a second event on the same topic where a meal is consumed, directly addressing a common compliance challenge in pharma.
• Locked Event Attachments: After an event is closed, a field rep uploads a venue receipt, and then the system automatically locks all attachments, preventing further modification while preserving the audit trail.
• Field Rep Event Planning: A sales rep (Sarah Jones) uses the new iPad UI to navigate upcoming events, search for speakers (e.g., a cardiologist for a product launch), check their eligibility and availability, and then create a new event, demonstrating the improved efficiency.
• Lightning Event Creation: A demo of creating a new speaker program in the Lightning Experience, showcasing the new modal for record creation, tabbed related lists for budget, team members, and speakers, and the "Save and New" functionality for adding multiple related records efficiently.