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.

My take on Salesforce Winter 16

It’s just my take/favorites, not covers entire release features –consider as quick bite in Consultants stand point.

Reference: salesforce_Winter16_release_notes.pdf

• Browser – Lightning Experience is supported most recent stable version of Chrome and Firefox, and it requires Internet Explorer 11 as not supported in 10 and lesser versions.
• Lightning Experience – available (within 24 hours of) in Winter 16 release, Lightning Experience doesn’t include every feature available in Salesforce Classic – consider and plan out the roll out strategy if you are moving to Lightning Experience
• This release is prominently focused on Lightning Experience and most part of release notes discuss about what is available and not available in Lightning Experience.
• Exception Handling – we can set email address to alert in case of any unhandled exceptions, previously it used to send to creator of the class by default.
• Enhanced Notes – It comes with auto save feature and ability to tag to multiple (parent) records, it comes in Lightning Experience but will not be available if Chatter is turned off.   
• What is Not available in Lightning Experience wrt List views
• List View – Inline editing
• List View – Sharing with Group
• List View – Following a record
• List View – Cloning list view
• List View with Chart is available, it helps a lot in data visualization
• Sales Path – provides clear separation of functions to focus on fields that matter at that time.
• Opportunity Board – Visual summary of all opportunity, drag and drop to update stage, create task right from the board.
• My Task List – Finally we got this addressed through standard feature with awesome lightning experience
• Salesforce App for Outlook – Get Salesforce content related to emails and events in outlook might help a lot.
• Redesigned Reports & Dashboard home page
• The ultimate, Rich Dashboard Editor – feature of resize, drag and drop feature etc are awesome
• Organization Sync – provides the feature to have second production environment, it can be used while primary application is on scheduled maintenance/upgrades. There are two difference options to control the Metadata sync and user data sync. Also there is a feature to temporarily pause the sync process.
• Email to Case feature available only in Salesforce Classic edition only, so this means if we enable Lightning where email to case already deployed – what is the problem will be faced?
• SOS Video chat and screen sharing – impressive!!
• Search Improvement for communities – will get to see similar topics while typing itself.
• More rollup summary fields – increased to 25 from 10.
• Picklist replacement process – now admin will get notification when picklist replacement is completed in the backend
• Global Picklist – one picklist field can be used across multiple objects. So values in picklist can be easily controlled. But it is now on pilot and available only in developer edition.
• All New Data Import Wizard – one place to import & update standard and custom object records.
• Records with inactive owners can be updated without any problems.
• Lightning Connect – Now external objects are writable which allows bi-directional integration.
• Enabling separate load for External object related list, meaning if Account has external object as related list loading of Account records won’t be get impacted by external object (related list).
• Process Builder – supports time based actions with multiple schedules to perform group of actions.
• New login screen look and feel which goes with Lightning Experience
• Now we can create multiple user account in one go and Login History now included the location of the user login as well.
• Platform Native Encryption – allows to encrypt selected objects and fields.
• Lightning Component is generally available in all Salesforce.com supported platforms like SF1, Classic, Lightning and communities.
• Lightning Components are now available in AppExchange portal.
• Object Manager –one place to manage standard and custom objects.
• Some screen still referring to classic screen even when we are in Lightning. In the lightning Experience – Setup menu, some of the menu just give the feel of classic screen just got included in the Lightning outer layer. Meaning the core pages are in classic feel only. For example when I create flow, the screen when I click “new” button is in classic feel. 

Dreamforce 15 – Key takeaways

This year Dreamforce was huge compare the previous year(s). Of course it is dreaming big year of year.   There is so many to take for everyone from Dreamforce, but for me as a Salesforce.com Developer, Consultant and Architect – it is huge.

However what I possibly took on that four days!

Presented a session in my company Booth on “Global rollout of Salesforce.com using Continuous Integration”.

New Product releases,

Salesforce IQ (RelateIQ) – Sales Cloud for Small Business

SalesforceApp cloud – Platform as a Service

Salesforce.comShield - Platform Encryption, Field Audit Trail, Data Archive & Event Monitoring 

On Heroku Platform,

Heroku flow seems very interesting for Continuous Delivery (especially when I did presentation on Continuous Integration).

Heroku DX – This supports Continuous Delivery by better source control, easier database management, and easy configuration and deployment by clicks.

There were series of sessions based on specific themes, was able to catch up with some of the sessions on these theme based tracks, which intern provided closure platform to connect people who looks for same topics.

Modern Architecture

CIO command center – Analytics

Security

Breakout sessions – below are the list of sessions I attended and clearly some of the sessions are very informative and good learning, some were explicitly sales demos and some were not mapped to correct roles and levels in the agenda builder.

CoE Workshop

Org Merge Best Practices

Large Enterprise Transformation (HP)

Modern Architecture (Theme based tracks)

Enterprise CoE

Single Vs Multi Org Strategy

Global Salesforce deployment – from business perspective

Lightning roadmap: All new Lightning Experience and Platform

Platform Encryption

Admin tools for Managing and Optimizing Data

Usability Testing

Cisco DevNet

Lightning Platform

Very importantly – If I need to say two things which are very much highlighted and attracted most of the crowd are Trailhead and Lightning Platform (Experience & Design System).

Of course it was awesome feeling to be on Dreamboat and nevertheless to say enjoyed the Dreamfest.

For a quick glance of Dreamforce 15 pictures.

DF15 – My top 5 picks - Day 2

Here is my agenda for day 2 at Dreamforce15. Just thought of sharing the details :)

PS: I wish this agenda will remains same but time has to say if able to make it all this sessions. 

DF15 – My top 5 picks - Day 1

It’s time to build Dreamforce agenda; these are my picks from day 1 session. If you are like minded and looking for some advanced developer, architecture and project management oriented sessions these are some of the best picks for your day 1 agenda. 

My Take on Salesforce.com Spring 15

It’s just my take, not covers entire release features –consider as quick bite in Developers and Consultants stand point.

Reference: salesforce_spring15_release_notes.pdf

• Happy to hear IE7 and IE8 will not be supported from Summer 15 onwards
• Salesforce Analytics for iOS – explore all data from mobile device, unfortunately it is not available in Developer edition.  Unlike typical Dashboard it is much more interactive. It can handle outside data as well through data sets (reusable integration).
• Question to Case – it is available in Salesforce org and Community where moderators can create a case from chatter questions; it is very easy, quick and effective.
• Duplicate Management –Easy to setup matching rules and implement duplicate management and it comes with clean error messages and duplicate details. To accomplish this functionality earlier - have been used to create Workflow Field update to update external Id field (which is marked as unique) with set of field value which identifies duplicates.
• Products now having field history tracking (happy for this but hold on Opportunity Products and Campaign still doesn't have this field history tracking).
• Thanks and Skills are free for Sales cloud users, liked Skills more than Thanks along with endorsements (is it LinkedIn influence?) 
• Enhancements to Asset object – includes Tab, Sharing settings and record types (previously it is child object to Account). 
• Knowledge Article - maximum amount of articles per organization is increased from 10,000 to 50,000.
• Accounts, Opportunities and custom object records owned by inactive users can be updated by any users.
• Organisation Sync – Salesforce.com will be available even when the down time of primary org! How wonderful it is!!
• Add records to chatter group - as like files now records also can be added to the Chatter group.  Further only these object records can be added - account, contact, lead, opportunity, contract, campaign, case, and custom object.
• Chatter feeds supports emotions :)
• Search All Setup – now it can search lot more items than earlier, it can search Custom fields and objects, Users, Groups, Profiles, Roles, Workflow – Rules, Email Alerts, Field Updates etc
• Track Data loader logins with Login History – Application will be listed as “DataLoaderPartnerUI” when users connect from Data Loader UI (tool).
• Apex Flex Queue – it can handle 100 batch jobs simultaneously and more importantly order of execution can be managed.
• Quick Deploy – It will help reduce deployment time through change sets by skipping apex test execution at that time of deployment but it has to meet these conditions 1) All components might have been validated in target environment in last 96 hours 2) All apex tests in target org should be passed and code coverage should be at least 75%.
• @testSetup – Create test records once and access them in every test method in the test class. Changes made to the record are each method is local and rollback at the end of the method. Note: If a test setup method calls a non-test method of another class, no code coverage is calculated for the non-test method.

My Take on Salesforce.com Spring 14

It’s just my take, not covers entire release features –consider as quick bite in Developers and Architects stand point. 

Reference: salesforce_spring14_release_notes.pdf 

Pilot: 

Skills:

• It seems Skills allows users to share information about their professional expertise. With skills, users can discover, collaborate with, and endorse others (LinkedIn impact!) based on their knowledge. 
• Expecting this would be available as child to user and appear in User’s related list. 
• I was implemented similar functionality using custom object and code and as child to contacts since user object page layout won’t allow related list, no endorse though! 

File Sync 

• It provides features to access files and keeps it sync between desktop, mobile devices and chatter. If anyone enables Salesforce1 and File Sync must be enabled to get most benefit out of Salesforce1. 

Flow trigger  

• New workflow action called a “flow trigger” introduced, which launches a flow when the workflow rule criteria are met. 
• For example, suppose you have a flow that looks up and assigns the relevant entitlement for a case. You can create a flow trigger to launch the flow whenever a case is created, so that all new cases are automatically set with a default entitlement.

Allocation of API Limit

• It enables to limit number of API calls to various applications.  
• It may help to prevent API limits are not eaten by non-critical apps, have heard numerous time that Data loader eaten up all API limits as some developer set very low batch size.  

General Enhancements: 

Topics

• Enable topics for objects to allow users to add topics to records. Adding topics helps organize records and makes them easier to find. Additionally it can be used to filter the records in list views. 

File Storage

• File storage limits have increased from 612 MB to 2 GB per paid user license. 
• For Example - Enterprise Edition organization with 600 users receives 1,211 GB of file storage, which is 2 GB per user multiplied by 600 users plus an additional 11 GB. 

Mobile Enhancements: 

Salesforce1 

• Enterprise class mobile app gives access to same information. It can be downloaded from App Store and Google Play. The Salesforce1 app uses your organization’s Salesforce edition, user license types, and assigned user profiles and permission sets to determine the data that’s available to each user. In most cases, users see the same objects, record types, fields, and page layouts that they do when working in the full Salesforce site.
• Users can view and switch between communities and their internal organization from the Salesforce1 app
• Appearance can be changed to match your company’s branding.
• View embedded chats in record detail page. 
• Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profile images can be displayed in Person Accounts, contacts and Lead as well now. Seems LinkedIn only demands to be logged in. 
• Lot more features, possibly business users won’t be waiting to go back office to access Salesforce.com normally through browser. It happens to have separate section in Release Notes to list How Salesforce1 difference from full Salesforce site!

SalesforceA 

• Mobile App for Salesforce.com Admins – way to go! Hope it might receive lot of welcome by Administrators. 
• Supports to perform – Edit user details, Password reset, and assigning Permission sets, activate / deactivate / unlock users.
• It can be connected to Production and Sandbox too! 

Communities 

• Now users can give, receive, and create badges without any additional licenses!
• Salesforce1 supports Community 
• Can send private chatter message 
• Orders are now available as standard object and accessible in Communities 
• Accounts and Contacts are accessible to Community users – whatever is shared. 
• Interestingly, data loader can be used by Partner Community Users.
• Now users can give, receive, and create badges without any additional licenses!
• Salesforce1 supports Community 

Sales 

• It seems forecasting can be down in multiple ways – almost using four different types. 
• Orders is now Standard objects, it looks like comes with Order products and option to connect with Contracts and Accounts. 
• Further Price book also integrated with Orders. It seems very tight integration – one order can have only one Price book and if price books selected it cannot be modified. (Very recently we have implemented Order management functionality which was completely custom – even if happened to do same project after Spring 14, we might have to go Custom implementation as standard has these price book gaps and miss lot of automation) 
• Order designed like Contracts – when it comes activating and deactivating Orders. 
• Place Order REST API will be more flexible for custom development and Integrations 

Services

• Solutions field “visible in Self Service portal” here after labelled as “Public”, hope it might have same API name as “IsPublished”. 
• Business hours can be applied to Milestones and Entitlement process 
• Knowledge is available as widget and footer in Console. 
• Live Agent – now as a pilot, files can be uploaded / transferred to CSR agent by end users. 
• Direct to Agent chat – Chat that originated from a particular button can be directly routed to a specific Agent. 
• Very important to notice that Salesforce.com mentioned retire of support for Salesforce.com CTI toolkit. This toolkit helps partners build adapter programs for call center users to install on their machines to integrate Salesforce with computer-telephony integration systems. Salesforce encourages moving to Open CTI. 
• Portions of a console from browser can be moved to any locations on the screens and can do pop out as well.
• Social Customer Service – It integrates with Radian6 so service agents can engage customers by responding to cases created from Twitter and Facebook

Analytics 

• Now there is an option available to exclude the standard footers in report export to excel / CSV file. It will remove the Report Name, Copy right and generated by user Information. 
• View All Data not required now to edit dashboard components and save the changes as the current running user of the dashboard, even if you’re not the running user. Until now, you needed the “View All Data” permission to edit a dashboard in place of the running user if you were not the running user yourself.
• All the capabilities of the Analytics REST API are also available in the Apex API. What it means we can use Apex to automate a reporting workflow. The Apex code takes a report ID and message as input, runs the specified report, and posts a Chatter message / send as email. Charts can be included in visual force page by just passing the report id in
• History Tracking for Cases – for example we can watch Status and Priority field which frequently changes. 

Force.com 

• The Data Import Wizard provides a unified interface; data can be imported from just one place. 50,000 record limit will be remain as same. 
• Partial Data Sandbox – Provides option to select specific object (standard & custom) records to copy over – maximum of 10,000 records per objects and 5GB of attachments. A Partial Data sandbox is a Developer sandbox plus the data you define in a sandbox template. It includes the reports, dashboards, price books, products, apps, and all customization under Setup.
• New User interface for monitoring deployments.