My take on Salesforce Winter 17

It’s just my take/favorites, didn’t mean to prepare short note of entire release notes –consider as quick bite in Consultants stand point. The initial version of Winter 17 release notes can be referred in below link.

 

Reference: salesforce_Winter17_release_notes.pdf

• Lightning Experience – what is newly added in to lightning experience?
• Field level ‘help text’ got added to lightning experience
• App Launcher got new look, it may help to see all tabs along with App
• Account gets automated upgrades, news and logos are automatically updated for account records
• When account gets created, there logo got added automatically and it can be reviewed as well
• Add quotes to opportunities in Lightning Experience as well
• List view inline editing: at a time only one record can be edited but more records can be saved
• Snap-In Chat (beta) helps end customers to chat with agent while they browsing company website, this uses live agent with simpler setup
• Global picklist administration now available in Lightning experience
• Google calendar sync with Salesforce events. 
• Triggers, Validation rules are supported in Account contact relationship object.
• Campaign Influence – with this feature, opportunity can be tagged to multiple campaigns and it may help for accurate analytics and marketing ownership.
• Account Insights, now named as News and it is now available for Accounts, Contacts and Leads  and this can be shared through Chatter (information listed in news are based out of US resources).
• Sending emails with API is extended. Single email can be send to 5000 external email addresses, and mass email can be send to 5000 external email addresses per day based on GMT time.
• Reports can be generated out of External object’s data.
• Open CTI is now supports to Lighting Experience as well.
• Field Service brings lot of operational features to manage workforce with service resources. 
• Social Customer Service: Instagram support is now generally available.
• Omni-channel Supervisor (Beta) provides live update on agents, queues and work. Additionally Live agent chat can be routed with “Omni channel” instead of skills (Beta).
• Service contract hierarchies can have up to 10,000 records now, and there are no longer any limits on hierarchy depth and width. Previously, a service contract could have up to 2,000 child service contracts only, and a hierarchy of service contracts could have up to 50 levels.
• Asset hierarchies can have up to 10,000 records now, and there are no longer any limits on hierarchy depth and width. Previously, an asset could have up to 2,000 child assets only, and a hierarchy of assets could have up to 50 levels.
• Field Service in communities: customers can easily schedule appointments from within communities.
• Chatter post now support to include up to 10 photos/files.
• Health cloud available in Enterprise, Performance and unlimited editions (not in Developer edition) provides care plan templates (problems, goals and tasks) to the care coordinators.
• Visual workflow (Flows) going Lightning (beta), even if we are using classic or lightning – this feature will make our flows like lightning experience.  With this we can run flows with lightning skin, embed flows in lightning pages, display flow screens with two columns.
• Now encrypted data also available in flows (pilot), it can support for update and still not to sorting or filter.
• Process builder
• Now can call another process builder, with invocable processes. So we can build one invocable process and call it from any process builder.
• Access owner field references like case owner’s email address in process builder.
• As like in flows, now encrypted data also available in process builder (pilot), it can support for update and still not to sorting or filter.
• Change sets – quick deployment validations expanded from 4 days to 10 days, so changes sets can be validated this week end and can be deployed next week end.
• Kindly note - this blog post skipped to discuss these product features – Pardot and Wave
• Retirement Announcements
• Chatter Answers will be retired from Winter 18, meaning users will not able to post, comment, answer and view existing chatter answer data. However “Chatter Questions” will take over to providing the similar functionalities.
• Salesforce1 mobile browser app on Blackberry 10 devices ends with this winter 17, Salesforce1 app is continue to be in Blackberry world and supported.
• Contacts – Stay in touch request feature planned for retirement in summer 17, any business
• Desktop CTI (also known as “CTI toolkit”) planned to retire from Spring 17.