Salesforce Winter17 Release Quick Summary

Last Updated on June 1, 2022 by Rakesh Gupta

Last week Salesforce published Winter’17 release(Preview) notes. The Winter’17 release of Salesforce is now in available under the pre-release program. On 09th and 10th September Sandboxes will be upgraded so that your organization gets the look and feel of Winter’17 release. In this release, you can find lot’s of new features as well as new enhancements related to Lightning Experience. For example, Create Custom Apps in Lightning Experience and Navigate More Efficiently, Launch a Lightning Component from an Action, Identify and Merge Duplicate Leads in Lightning Experience, Kanban view is now available for Leads, Contracts, and Campaigns. 

Also, check out these beat and pilot features

• Power Up Your Lightning Pages with the Flow Component (Beta): – You can now quickly add flows to any Lightning Page—App pages, Record pages, and Home pages alike. 
• Support Your Customers from Your Website with Snap-In Chat (Beta): – Now you can add the Snap-in Chat widget to your website so that the clients can quickly get answers to their questions by chatting with an agent while browsing your site. Snap-In Chat uses Live Agent, but with a simpler setup. This feature is available in Lightning Experience only.
• Update Org-Wide Defaults with Asynchronous Parallel Recalculation (Pilot): – This is one of the excellent features in Winter’17 release. When you update an org-wide default, recalculation is now processed asynchronously and in parallel. Please refer this knowledge article for more details How do I speed up recalculation of sharing rules?. 
• Build a Mocking Framework with the Apex Stub API (Pilot): – Apex now provides a stub API for implementing your own mocking framework. You can now define the behavior of stub objects, which are created at runtime as anonymous subclasses of Apex classes.

Customer/User’s Point of view: –

1. Email on Announcement Graduates (Generally Available): – When posting an announcement, group managers can send emails and notifications to all group members, regardless of their email preferences, making sure that everyone sees the info.

To enable this feature, create a permission set to grant Send announcement emails system permission to the user. This feature is available in Lightning Experience, Salesforce Classic, and all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

2. Play Videos Directly in the Feed: – Now you can play videos inline in feeds is available everywhere! When you attach a video to a post or comment, anyone can play it right where it’s posted. This feature is available in Lightning Experience, all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app, and communities based on the Customer Service (Napili) template.

3. Create Multiple Records More Quickly in Lightning Experience: – After your users create, edit, or clone a record in Lightning Experience, they can create another record using the Save & New button. The Save & New button lets users create records repeatedly without leaving their spot in the app. This feature is available in Lightning Experience only. The button is available in the same locations as in Salesforce Classic, which include most Create, Edit, and Clone pages.

4. Troubleshoot Record Errors Quickly and Easily in Lightning Experience: – When you edit records inline and errors occur, the fields containing errors appear in a popup at the bottom for easy scanning. Fields are linked in the popup so that your users can navigate to them quickly to fix. This feature is available in Lightning Experience only. Field error descriptions also display under the field.

5. Inline Edit and Mass Actions in Lightning Experience: – Now you can get your work done with fewer clicks when working from list views. Edit fields or select multiple records to quickly add members to a campaign or accept leads from a queue.

6. Contract object is now available in Lightning Experience: – Manage the lifecycle of contracts associated with your accounts and opportunities with more bells and whistles in Lightning Experience. Contracts are available in Lightning Experience, Salesforce Classic, and all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app. 

7. Personalize Calendars with Different Colors: – Now you can change the color of different calendars to suit a business practice or personal preference. Choose a color, or create your own, and even add a texture to your calendars. This feature is available in Lightning Experience only.

8. Identify and Merge Duplicate Leads in Lightning Experience: – Now you can merge records in Lightning experience. It will give you the ability to resolve duplicate lead records as they find them. Salesforce identifies key field differences across multiple records and lets a rep merge the best information from the top three records.

9. Modify Records from the Kanban View: –  Now you can edit or delete records from the Kanban view. This feature is available in Lightning Experience only.

10. Opportunities: Probability Field Editable in Lightning Experience: – Opportunity owners can now manually edit the Probability field without switching to Salesforce Classic. This feature is available in Lightning Experience, Salesforce Classic, and all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

11. Filter Reports by Relative Dates and Role Hierarchy in Lightning Experience: – Want to see all the opportunities managed by your team out west or all the opportunities you’ve closed this year? Filtering your opportunity report by role hierarchy lets you view opportunities owned by reps who work for specific managers or in specific roles. Filtering by calendar dates, such as Close Date greater than Aug 1, 2015, filter your report by a relative date: Close Date equals LAST MONTH

12. Log In Password-Free with Lightning Login: – Now, logging in can be as simple as a click, a tap, and a touch: Click your username, tap to approve the notification on your mobile device, and authenticate with your fingerprint or PIN. The speed, convenience, and enhanced security that users get with Lightning Login leaves password-protected logins in the dust. This feature is available in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.

13. Subscribe to Reports in Lightning Experience: – You can now subscribe to reports in Lightning Experience. Subscribe to up to five reports and receive refreshed report results by email on a schedule you set: daily, weekly, or monthly.

14. Lightning Experience now shows a complete list of people who liked your Comment. This feature is available in Lightning Experience and in communities based on the Customer Service (Napili) template.

15. Stay-in-Touch Requests, which allows users to send outbound Salesforce emails to request updated contact information for contacts and person accounts, is scheduled for retirement in Summer’17.

Developer Point of view: –

1. Assign a Custom Record Page to Lightning Apps: – When you activate a custom record page in the Lightning App Builder, you now have two options. You can make the record page the default for all your users. Or you can assign the record page to one or more Lightning apps to give your users access to a page customized for the app that they’re working in.

2. Add Components from the AppExchange in Lightning App Builder: – The integrated AppExchange experience is now available in Lightning App Builder. You can browse and install third-party components directly from the user interface, making it easier than ever to add pre-built solutions to your projects.

3. Launch a Lightning Component from an Action: – Lightning component actions are custom actions that invoke a Lightning component. Because they support Apex and JavaScript, Lightning component actions provide a secure way to build client-side custom functionality. This feature is available in Lightning Experience and all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app. Lightning component actions can’t call just any Lightning component in your org. For a component to work as a Lightning component action, it has to be configured specifically for that purpose and implement either the force:LightningQuickAction or force:LightningQuickActionWithoutHeader interfaces.

4. Create More Spanning Relationships Per Object in Formulas: – Now the number of unique relationships per object is increased from 10 to 15. Objects can be related to each other via a relationship field. You can create formulas that reference fields on another object, known as a spanning relationship. When creating a formula in a formula field, field update, or validation rule, you might get an error if you exceed the limit. You’ll hit the limit in several ways, including:

• You have 15 formula fields and each formula references a unique object.
• You have 10 formula fields, and each formula references a unique object. You then create a workflow field update that references 5 different objects.
• You have a validation rule that references 4 unique objects, a field update that references 7 other objects, and a formula field that references 4 other objects.

5. Processes Can Execute Actions on More Than One Criteria: – You can now invoke a process from another process. Plus you can access owner fields and encrypted fields. This feature is available in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.

A) Build Reusable Processes: – Now you can create a process that another process can invoke. With invocable processes, you can reuse sections of your processes. Build one invocable process, call it from multiple processes or from multiple action groups in the same process. You can invoke processes with objects that share at least one unique ID. For example, in the Account and Contact objects, the AccountId field is unique to Account and also used by Contact. You can create an invocable process that updates a Contact record. Then you can invoke it from:

• A process that updates an Account record’s billing address
• A process that adds an Account status 

When you create a process that invokes another process, each one counts toward your process and other applicable limits. DML limits in processes that invoke processes count as one transaction.

B) View Your Process Types in One Place: – When you see your list of processes in My Processes, check out the new column we added: Process Type. In it, you can see if a particular process is invocable or not. A blank cell indicates that it’s a non-invocable process.

C) Access Owner Fields from Process Builder: – Process Builder now lets you access fields on an owner, such as to reference the email or name of a lead’s owner. Previously, you could reference OwnerId but not any of the owner’s fields. If you’re working with an object that can be owned by multiple other objects such as User and Queue, you choose which object’s fields to reference.

6. Visual Flow Enhancement: – There are several enhancements in Visual workflow, those are followings

A) Run Flows with a Lightning Skin (Beta): – Have you ever wanted your flows to look better, similar to Salesforce Lightning Experience? If yes then navigate to Setup | Build | Create | Workflow & Approvals | Process Automation Settings and select Enable Lightning Runtime for Flows (Beta) checkbox. After this when you launched from a URL or Setup use the Lightning runtime experience instead of the classic runtime experience.

B) Embed Your Flows in Lightning Pages (Beta): – You can now add flows to any Lightning Page – App pages, Record pages, and Home pages alike. All Lightning Pages are available in Lightning Experience (and App pages are available in all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app). Your flow might need the ID of the record that it’s operating on, Record pages send the ID to your flow automatically if you have the correct Text input variable configured.

C) Display Flow Screens in Two Columns (Beta): – When you build flows that collect lots of information, their screens can render as a never-ending skinny column of fields. Break up the layout of those screens by rendering specific flows in two columns. This feature is available in Lightning Experience, Salesforce Classic, and all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

D) Customize the Look and Feel of Flow Interviews (Pilot): – You can now use the REST API to customize the flow run-time experience to your heart’s desire. For example apply your company’s branding, Create two-column layouts,  Create choice buttons, etc.

7. Visualforce Pages Can Be Used in Service Console with Clickjack Protection Enabled: – You can now embed custom Visualforce pages in the Service Console even when clickjack protection is enabled for Visualforce pages. Previously, if you wanted to use Visualforce pages in the Service Console, you needed to disable clickjack protection for all Visualforce pages. This improvement was made by changing the X-Frame-Options HTTP header from “SAMEORIGIN” to “ALLOW-FROM”, and listing the specific hosts from which your org’s requests are served. This change allows Visualforce pages to be used in the Service Console, even though Visualforce is served from a different origin server than the Service Console.

<aura:application extends="force:slds">
    <!-- customize your application here -->
</aura:application>

req.setBody('UserName:{!HTMLENCODE($Credential.Username)}')
req.setBody('Password:{!HTMLENCODE($Credential.Password)}')

10. View More Information About Apex Test Runs: – The Apex Test History page now shows the start date and time for test runs. Also, the status column has been updated to show the number of failed and enqueued methods for the test run. This feature is available in Lightning Experience only.  Follow the path Setup |  Apex | Apex Test History to view all test run results for your org. Test results are retained for 30 days after they finish running unless cleared.

11. Make More API Calls and Get Fewer Headaches When Calculating API Limits: – For Enterprise Edition, Unlimited Edition, Performance Edition, and Professional Edition with API access enabled, the old calculation was based on your the number of licenses and the license types, with a guaranteed minimum of 15,000 calls per 24-hour period. Salesforce scrapped the minimum and gave everyone 15,000 more calls. The calculation for Developer Edition org and sandboxes remains the same. Updates to the new calculation might not take effect immediately. If your org is using the old calculation after it has upgraded to Winter’17, contact your account executive to switch to the new calculation.

12. Track Subscriber Package Errors Through Email Notifications: –  You can now send a notification to an email address in your org whenever your subscriber’s attempt to install, upgrade, or uninstall a package app fails. Use notifications to address issues proactively with managed and unmanaged packages and provide support to subscribers so that they can successfully install and upgrade your apps. This feature is available to eligible Salesforce partners. To enable this feature, contact your Salesforce representative.

13. Now you can create and manage your global picklist value sets from in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce.

14. LockerService is a powerful new security architecture for Lightning components that was a critical update for Summer’16. This critical update was scheduled for auto-activation in Winter’16. The auto-activation date has been postponed until Spring’17.

Salesforce1 Enhancements: –

Users have several options for accessing Salesforce1 on mobile devices.

• Install the Salesforce1 downloadable app on Apple® and Android ™ mobile devices. Users can download the app from the App Store or Google Play™.
• Access the Salesforce1 mobile browser app from a supported mobile browser on Apple and Android devices, or select Windows mobile phones. This option doesn’t require anything to be installed.

1. Send Text Messages from Salesforce1: – Now your sales reps can do what’s natural and send SMS text messages to customers and colleagues, without needing to leave the app. What a time saver to whip out an answer to a lead’s question or confirm an appointment with an account, right from the record where all the details are. This feature is available in all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app. There are a few requirements for the new Send Text action.

• SMS messaging must be enabled on the user’s mobile phone or tablet. The action uses SMS messaging only, not iMessage on iOS devices.
• The Phone field on a record must include a valid phone number. If the Phone field is empty, the action doesn’t appear in the record’s action bar or action menu.

2. Change Record Types in Salesforce1: – Salesforce1 users can keep their business moving from the road by updating record types for existing records. The new Change Record Type action is available from the action bar in all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

3. Add Products to Opportunities in Salesforce1: – Salesforce1 users can do more to get an opportunity ready for anywhere by adding products straight from Salesforce1. The new Add Products action is available in all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app. The new Add Products action is automatically available on the Products related list on opportunities and provides your reps with greater functionality. If a price book isn’t already associated with an opportunity and more than one price book exists, the action prompts users to pick one. If just one price book is available, the action adds it automatically.

4. Add Quotes to Opportunities in Salesforce1: – Salesforce1 users are no longer limited to simply working with existing quotes while out of the office. Now they can create quotes and quote line items for your customers, and get quotes approved, directly from the field. These enhancements are available in all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app. The New Quote action is now available on the Quotes related list on opportunities. And the Add Line Item action is on the Quote Line Items related list on quotes.

5. Post Snapshots of Enhanced Charts to Chatter: – Salesforce1 users can post snapshots of charts to Chatter. Seeing the post in Salesforce1, mobile users can save the snapshot to their device or link directly to the actual dashboard. Sharing chart snapshots is available on the Salesforce1 mobile browser app only. Enhanced Charts must be enabled for your org.

6. Grow Group Membership in Salesforce1: – It is now easy to manage group membership from outside the office, group owners and managers can now add members to groups from all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app. The Add Members action is available in the action bar on all groups. Users can quickly add everyone who belongs to a group in one go. The Add Members dialog displays a list of colleagues with whom the user has interacted and who may be appropriate to include in the group. Alternatively, users can search in the dialog to find any user in the org. 

7. Add Group Photos with the Salesforce1 Downloadable Apps: – Group owners and managers who use the Salesforce1 downloadable apps can now bring groups to life by adding photos directly from a mobile device.  Take a picture of the whole crew, or use nay image and upload it to the team’s group straight away.  Previously, adding group photos was available in the full Salesforce site and the Salesforce1 mobile browser app only.

8. To be consistent with changes in Lightning Experience, the Feed item in the Salesforce1 navigation menu is now called Chatter. This change appears in all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

Note: – You can download release notes in HTML format! Moreover, for PDF file.

Formative Assessment:

I want to hear from you!

What is one thing you learned from this post? How do you envision applying this new knowledge in the real world? Feel free to share in the comments below.