Last Updated on August 28, 2017 by Rakesh Gupta

Salesforce Winter’18 preview release notes are out. They are now available under the pre-release program. On the 8th and 9th of September, Sandboxes will be upgraded; as a result, your organization will get the look and feel of Winter’18 release. In this release, you will find lots of new features, as well as, new enhancements related to Lightning Experience and Communities.

For example, features like, Get to the Right Record Faster with Enhanced Instant Results, Use More Types of Lead Conversion with Einstein Lead Scoring, Record Custom Voicemail Greetings, and Use Case Milestones in Lightning Experience are now available in Lightning Experience.

Also, check out these beta and pilot features:

Track Time with the Time Field Type (Beta): – Use this custom field type to track time that is not specific to a single date, such as preferred contact hours. The time field type is useful for time management, event planning, and project management.
Lightning Report Builder (Beta): – Turn on the Lightning report builder and give your users a powerful, intuitive tool for analyzing Salesforce data. In the Lightning report builder, the report format automatically updates as you group report data. Tabular, summary and matrix reports are all available, but you don’t select the format before grouping the data.
Reimagine the Future of Packaging (Beta): – Second-Generation Packaging ushers a new way for partners and enterprise customers to develop, distribute, and manage their apps and metadata.
Check Your Encryption Coverage with Encryption Statistics (Beta): – The Encryption Statistics feature shows Shield Platform Encryption customers how much of their data is encrypted with an active tenant secret. The Encryption Statistics page is a one-stop portal for information about your encrypted data. You can see how much of an object’s data is encrypted and uses an active key, and which fields contain encrypted data. Deterministic Encryption pilot customers can also see which fields use a mixture of encryption schemes.
Track External Object Data Callouts with Event Log Files (Pilot): – Audit the historical activity of your org’s access to external object data. For each callout, you can check whether it was a query or write operation when the call occurred, and which user accessed the external data
Deliver Millions of Events Per Day with High-Volume Platform Events (Pilot): – Now you can publish and subscribe to high volumes of platform events. Deliver several millions of events per day using the new high-volume platform events. By using a different underlying data store, the system processes high-volume events more efficiently than standard events.

You can now add flows to the action (Launch a Flow from an Object-Specific Action (Beta)) menu on your Lightning pages without hunting down the flow’s URL. When you create a flow action, you can pick from a list of available flows rather than enter the flow URL manually. To work as a flow action, a flow must be active and have screens. This feature is available in Lightning Experience and in versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

Lightning Experience is supported by Apple® Safari® version 10.x+ on Mac OS X and Microsoft® Edge for Windows® 10. The most recent stable versions of Mozilla® Firefox® and Google Chrome™ are also supported. You can continue to use IE11 to access Lightning Experience until December 16, 2017. If you opt into Extended Support for IE11, you can continue to use IE11 to access Lightning Experience until December 31, 2020. You can’t access Lightning Experience via a mobile browser.

Salesforce Classic is supported with Microsoft® Internet Explorer® version 9, 10, and 11, Apple® Safari® version 10.x on Mac OS X, and Microsoft® Edge for Windows® 10. The most recent stable versions of Mozilla® Firefox® and Google Chrome™ are also supported.

Below is the quick summary of Winter’18 release from user’s /customer’s

Customers/Users Point of view

1. Share Calendars with Coworkers in Lightning Experience: – Now it is possible to share your calendar with coworkers. Sales reps can give coworkers access to their My Events calendars to share availability, meeting details, or even let coworkers add events on the reps’ behalf. Reps can give access from the calendar view by clicking on My Events | Share Calendar. The reps can choose a co-worker to share with and select the level of access.

2. Multitouch Campaigns Influence: – With new multi-touch campaign influence models, your marketing department can see the influence details they are most interested in. Separate models track the first touch, last touch, and evenly distribute revenue attribution to all the campaigns that influence an opportunity. This change applies to Salesforce users in orgs that have purchased Pardot. In addition to the Primary Campaign Source model, you can now enable up to three new models for Pardot users who use Customizable Campaign Influence.

The First Touch model tracks where your brand first interacts with prospects.
The Last Touch model shows which campaigns are helping close deals.
The Even Distribution model shows how campaigns perform across all interactions with prospects.

3. Record Custom Voicemail Greetings: – Now you can add personal flair to voicemail. Sales reps can record custom greetings on their Lightning Dialer voicemail. This change applies to Lightning Experience only.

4. Spice Up Your Conversations with Emojis: – Now you can engage your audience by adding zest to your feed. When you post, comment, and add details to your questions, or when you answer questions, the emoji icon appears in the Chatter publisher. Emojis are available in Lightning Experience and Lightning communities.

5. Create a Custom Report Type to See Your Top Ranked Groups: – Find out which groups are most active – i.e., or have most activity – in your org, with a new custom report type. Create the custom report type using Groups as the primary object, and monitor your groups’ rankings accordingly.

A group’s ranking is calculated weekly; and, it is based on the number of posts, comments, and likes. Salesforce tallies the count on Sundays and updates the rankings accordingly.

6. Take a Guilt-Free Vacation with Out of Office (Generally Available): – Now it is possible to set out-of-office message for Chatter post. You can set the dates you are away and add a custom message. Your message and dates display prominently next to your name in Chatter, not just on your profile but almost anywhere your name appears.

By default, the Out of Office message is Out of Office along with the start and end dates that you select. To set Out of Office message click on the Out of Office button, as shown in the following screenshot:

To enable Out of Office message for your org, click on the Setup | Chatter Settings | Out of Office and select Users can set Out of Office messages checkbox.

7. Add Tables with Up to 10 Columns to Dashboards (Beta): – The Lightning table, a new dashboard table component, shows up to 200 records and 10 columns from the fields available in a source report’s report type. (So the fields need not be added to the source report as columns!) Add a Lightning table to supplement chart and metric-based overviews with record-by-record details.

This feature is new in Lightning Experience.

8. Embed Dashboards on the Home Tab and in Lightning Apps: – Embed dashboards to the Home Tab using the Lightning App Builder. Customize the Home tab, or create a Lightning app, then drag-and-drop a dashboard component into place. Embedded dashboards are not available on record pages.

9. Get the Full Power of Enhanced Folder Sharing in Lightning Experience: – Lightning Experience now has all you need to organize and share your reports and dashboards. It is now a snap to create, share, rename, and delete folders. No more switching to Salesforce Classic! This feature is new in Lightning Experience.

10. Save Time When Emailing Customers with Merge Fields and Salesforce ClassicTemplates: – Agents can insert merge fields, preview emails, and clear emails from the email publisher for cases. They can also insert Salesforce Classic email templates, attach files, and remove attachments if they change their mind. Previously, agents could only attach files and insert templates created in Lightning Experience. These changes apply to Lightning Experience only.

Salesforce has updated the toolbar on the case email publisher. It contains various actions including

Attach file
Insert merge field
Insert, create, or update template
Preview email
Clear and revert email

11. Add a Case Comment from a Related List: – Agents can now add case comments directly from the Case Comments related list with the click of a button.

This change applies to Lightning Experience and all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

12. Collaborative Forecasts: – Configure Collaborative Forecasts in Lightning Experience. Forecasts users also get more information and can do more when they are projecting sales. Salesforce admins can access Forecasts Hierarchy and Forecasts Settings in Setup.

13. Enterprise Territory Management: – Configure Enterprise Territory Management in Setup without switching to Salesforce Classic. And reps can now manage their sales territories in Lightning Experience. Salesforce admins can access Territory Models, Territory Settings, and Territory Types in Setup. Remember you can also view the Assigned Territories related list on accounts, but this list is read-only.

14. Route Work to Agents in Lightning Experience (Generally Available): – Support agents can use the Omni-Channel utility in the Lightning Service Console to change their presence status and accept and decline work requests. Live Agent chats and active time tracking are now available in Lightning Experience.

15. Organize Your Libraries in Communities: – In Communities, library managers can now create, rename, and delete folders in libraries, and move files between folders in a library. They can create multiple levels of subfolders. All users who have access to a library can see the folders.

16. Keep Files on Records Private: – Attach a file to a record and keep it private, or share it with select individuals or groups. Previously, all files on records in Lightning Experience were visible to everyone with access to the record. Now you can choose who sees your file.

Make sure to add the File Privacy on Records field to the Files page layout. Only file owners and administrators have the power to change the value of File Privacy on Records. This feature is new in Lightning Experience and communities.

17. A New Way to Work with Windows 10: – Salesforce Chatter is available for Windows 10 Anniversary Edition. Users can now buy it from the Windows Store. This app gives Windows 10 Anniversary Edition users a new, easy to use way to access Chatter and collaborate with coworkers.

18. View Related List Data Quickly with Related List Quick Links: – With the Related List Quick Links component, sales reps can view multiple related lists in quick succession just by hovering over a link. And, they can complete actions right from within the hover pane.

The Related List Quick Links component is available for record pages only.

Additional enhancements worth noting!

1. Add Opportunity Team Members Faster: – In Lightning Experience, now sales reps can add multiple members of an opportunity team on one page.

2. Use Case Milestones in Lightning Experience: – Your agents can now see active, completed, and violated milestones from case record pages. They can also drill down to see case milestone details. This change applies to Lightning Experience and all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

Administrators/Developers Point of view

1. Make Your Lightning Pages Dynamic: – Now you can control when a component appears on a record page by adding filter conditions and logic to its properties. No need to add anything to your custom components. It is all handled by the Lightning App Builder. For example, construct a filter that causes a Quip component on an opportunity page to display when the Amount is greater than $1 million.

–> Now you can create custom Lightning Pages by cloning the ones you already have.

2. Set More Variable Values in the Flow Component: – You can now set values for your picklist and multi-select picklist variables directly from the properties pane.

The above example, shows Flow component in the Lightning App Builder that sets a picklist variable (Type12) to Open.

3. Turn On Multiple Currencies Without Contacting Support: – It’s now possible to enable multiple currencies instantaneously without contacting Salesforce Customer Support or locking your org.

To enable this feature, click Setup | Company Information. Then select Company Information and click Edit, select Activate Multiple Currencies, as shown in the following screenshot:

4. Explore Salesforce DX (Generally Available): – Salesforce DX is the new frontier for Salesforce app development and provides both individual developers and development teams with an integrated, end-to-end lifecycle designed for high-performance agile development. Whether you are using Lightning components, Visualforce, Apex, or APIs with your favorite programming language, enhancements to Force.com helps you to develop amazing applications, integrations, and packages for resale to other organizations.

Learn how Salesforce DX changes the development paradigm from org-based to artifact-based development.

5. Process Builder Enhancements: – There are several enhancements in Process Builder, as follows:

A) Start a Process When a Platform Event Occurs: – Now you can create a process that starts when a platform event occurs. For example, when Salesforce receives the Printer Status event, and if ink is low, launch a process that orders more ink and assigns a service technician to install the ink cartridge.

B) Quickly Reference Specific Users and Queues in Your Processes: – Instead of manually entering a user ID, simply search for that user by name. You can also search for queues.

C) Access Encrypted Data in Process Builder (Generally Available): – Process Builder now supports encrypted fields, except in filters, like in the Update Records action. For example, if you have encrypted Account Name, you can update that field’s value, but you can not filter based on that field.

6. Visual Flow Enhancements: – There are several enhancements in Visual workflow, as follows:

A) Translate Flows from the Translation Workbench: – You can now use the Translation Workbench to translate flows and maintain translations across flow versions.

B) Configure a Flow to Wait for a Platform Event to occur: – You can now subscribe to platform events in a flow Wait element. With platform events, a flow can wait for something to occur, inside or outside your Salesforce org. Previously, a flow could wait only for a relative or absolute date/time value.

For this example, configure the flow to wait for a Vendor Response platform event to be published (1). The event must have the right order number and its status must be Shipped (2). Pass the event’s data into an sObject variable to reference the expected delivery date in another part of the flow (3).

C) Add Flows Anywhere in Salesforce with the Flow Lightning Component: – Now you can add your flows to your custom components and apps by using the lightning:flow Lightning component. For detailed instructions, check out this article

D) Add Flows to Lightning Communities: – With the Flow component in Community Builder, you can now add flows to your pages. Add the Flow component to your community pages just like any other component.

E) Set Values for Picklist and Multi-Select Picklist Variables: – In Lightning runtime, you can now set values for your picklist and multi-select picklist variables directly from the URL.

For example, use the flow URL that sets a picklist variable (industry) to Banking and a multi-select picklist variable (locations) to New York and Buenos Aires.

/flow/flowName?accountId={!Account.Id}&industry=Banking&locations=New York; Buenos Aires

7. Find Things in Setup Faster with Enhanced Quick Find: – Quick Find gives you more ways to find what you need with results from related searches, links to global search, and more. Now when you search in Quick Find, you get results for related items.

8. Meet the Refreshed LockerService API Viewer: – The LockerService API Viewer has a streamlined user interface and visual design based on the Salesforce Lightning Design System. The API viewer lets you explore properties available on the secure versions of essential JavaScript DOM APIs, such as window. Use the API viewer to compare browser-supported objects to their secure versions—for example, window and SecureWindow—to uncover compatibility considerations.

9. Create Custom Page Templates with Lightning Components: – Now you are no longer limited to the standard templates available for Lightning record, app, and Home pages. Take your business needs in hand, and create a custom page template of your own that has the structure and components that you define. Add as many regions as you need, and you can also add custom styling.

10. Use Lightning Data Service to Perform Record Operations Without Apex Code (Generally Available): – Use Lightning Data Service to load, create, edit, or delete a record in your component, without using Apex code. Lightning Data Service improves performance and data consistency across your components.

Lightning Data Service (LDS) is the Lightning Components counterpart to the Visualforce standard controller, providing access to the data displayed on a page. Without LDS, each component within an app makes independent server calls to perform CRUD operations on a record, even if all the components app pull from the same record data. Each redundant server call reduces performance and potentially leads to inconsistencies, creating situations where a server call refreshes one component, leaving the other components out of date.

LDS identifies and eliminates requests that involve the same record data, sending a single shared data request that updates all relevant components. Not only does this eliminate situations where components can have inconsistent data, but it also acts as a publisher hub that notifies components of data changes.

11. Get Your Visualforce Pages Ready for Lightning Experience: – Want to know if the Visualforce pages in your org are ready for Lightning Experience? Use the Lightning Experience Visualforce check to generate a report that flags pages that need changes before they are ready for prime time in Lightning Experience.

Run the Lightning Experience Visualforce Report directly from your Lightning Readiness Report PDF. The Visualforce Report looks at all pages in your org used in the past 90 days, and identifies features that are not available in Lightning Experience.

12. Automatically Style Existing Visualforce Pages with Lightning Experience Stylesheets(Beta): – Easily control whether a page is styled with the look of Lightning Experience when viewed in Lightning Experience or the Salesforce1 app with the lightningStylesheets attribute.

To style your Visualforce page to match the Lightning Experience UI when viewed in Lightning Experience or the Salesforce1 app, set lightningStylesheets=”true“ in the <apex:page> tag. When the page is viewed in Salesforce Classic, it doesn’t get Lightning Experience styling.

 <apex:page lightningStylesheets="true">

13. Run Parallel Tests Using a New Option on the @isTest Annotation: – Use the @isTest(isParallel=true) annotation to indicate test classes that can run in parallel and are not restricted by the default limits on the number of concurrent tests. This makes the execution of test classes more efficient, because more tests can be run in parallel.

This annotation overrides the default settings that disable parallel testing. A test class that does not have this annotation is restricted by the default limits on the number of concurrent tests.

14. Control Access to Apex REST Services: – You can now control access to Apex REST services with the new Apex Rest Services administrative permission. You no longer need the API Enabled administrative permission enabled to call Apex REST services. Use Apex REST Services to create permission sets for users that need to access Apex REST services but not access APIs, like the SOAP API.

15. Retain More Debug Logs for Longer: – Salesforce has changed the way that they delete old debug logs. Now they retain debug logs for 7 days. You can generate a total of 250 MB of debug logs in a 15-minute window. When your org is upgraded to Winter ’18, all logs that are at least 7 days old are deleted.

Previously, you could generate up to 50 MB of debug logs. Salesforce kept them indefinitely, deleting the oldest log each time that you exceeded the limit. Salesforce has removed the 50 MB limit and changed to a 7-day storage limit

16. Query Millions of Records with Async SOQL (Generally Available): – Async SOQL is a method for running SOQL queries in the background over Salesforce entity data. Use the Async SOQL API to run queries on big, standard, and custom objects. It provides the optimal way to process large amounts of data stored in Salesforce big objects.

With the introduction of custom big objects, it is possible to keep billions of records on the platform. To help you work at this new scale, Salesforce has developed Async SOQL to handle queries on huge amounts of data. Async SOQL is implemented in the form of a RESTful API that enables you to run queries in the familiar syntax of the SOQL language.

Salesforce1 Enhancements

Users have several options for accessing Salesforce1 on mobile devices.

Install the Salesforce1 downloadable app on Apple® (iOS 10.0 later) or Android ™ (Andriod 4.4 or later) 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 and some Windows mobile phones. This option does not require anything to be installed.

1. Manage Service Contracts in Salesforce1: – View, create and manage service contracts and contract line items in all versions of the Salesforce1 app. Your team can quickly review or modify contract terms while visiting customers or completing field service appointments. This change applies to all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

If entitlement management is enabled in your org, service contracts now appear in the Salesforce1 navigation menu.

2. Seamlessly Clone Cases: – Agents can easily log multiple issues for a customer or user using the information in existing cases. It is as simple as clicking the clone button, filling in the information, assigning and saving the case. Previously, case cloning was available only in Salesforce Classic. This change applies to Lightning Experience and all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

In new orgs, the Clone button is available on the Cases page layout by default. In existing orgs, add the Clone quick action to the page layout.

3. Legacy Charts in Salesforce1 Will Retire in Spring ’18 (Phased Retirement): – Legacy Charts have been part of the Salesforce1 experience for many years, but let us bid them farewell. Enhanced Charts (the mobile version of Lightning Experience charts) have replaced Legacy Charts in all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app. Not ready to switch? Revert Salesforce1 to Legacy Charts from Setup. But it is a good idea to familiarize yourself with Enhanced Charts now because Legacy Charts are retiring in Spring ’18. This change applies to all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

Here’s what the Legacy Charts retirement means for your org.

In Spring ’18, Salesforce1 will include only Enhanced Charts, and you will not be able to switch back to Legacy Charts.
Orgs created during or after the Summer ’16 release already provide Enhanced Charts as the only charts experience for Salesforce1. For these orgs, the option to disable Enhanced Charts does not appear in Setup.
Legacy Charts retirement does not affect charts in the full Salesforce site (Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience).

4. See More Relevant Objects in the Recent Section: – When users first start using Salesforce1, the Recent section in the navigation menu contains the same items as the Lightning Experience navigation bar. When performing a global search in Salesforce1, users see results only for the objects that appear in the Recent section. When users start building a search history, the default list is replaced with their frequently used objects. This change applies only to the Salesforce1 Android downloadable app and the Salesforce mobile browser.

5. Manage Territories on the Go: – Mobile reps can now manage their sales territories. In Salesforce1, Enterprise Territory Management users can change the assigned territory in opportunity details. Users also see a read-only Assigned Territories related list on accounts. These changes apply to all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

6. Access Case Milestones on the Go: – Agents can view case milestone updates in the case feed, open the case milestones record page, and view the Case Milestones related list in Salesforce1. This feature is new in all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

To use this feature, your org must set up entitlements, an entitlement process, and milestones. Then you can add the Milestones component to the case record page in Lightning App Builder. The Milestones component supports only cases. You can not add the component to any other object page.

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