Last Updated on April 15, 2019 by Rakesh Gupta

Currently, Spring’18 release is available under the pre-release program. On the 5th and 6th of January, Sandboxes will be upgraded; as a result, your organization will get the look and feel of Spring’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 Guidance for Data Protection and Privacy Regulations, Show Your True Colors with Themes in Lightning, Get Search Results for More Objects, and Opportunities: Opportunity Splits, Opportunity Product Name Visibility, Price Book Selection are now available in Lightning Experience.

Also, check out these beta and pilot features:

Einstein Forecasting: Intelligent Predictions About Your Sales Teams (Beta): – Let Einstein take the guesswork out of forecasting. Use artificial intelligence to get more certainty and visibility into how your sales teams are doing. Einstein improves your forecasting accuracy with predictions about your sales team’s opportunities based on past data.
Set Different Login Policies for Salesforce and Community Users (Beta): – If you have a community set up in your org, you can now specify different login policies for internal and external users. For example, you can set up less restrictive access policies for employees that log in to your community, but external users are subject to profile IP restrictions.
Track Progress Through a Flow with Stages (Beta): – Now you can indicate a user’s point in the flow using the new stage resource and two new system variables: {!$Flow.ActiveStages} and {!$Flow.CurrentStage}. For example, indicate where in a purchasing flow the user is with breadcrumbs or a progress indicator.
Reference Salesforce release notes
Lightning Experience Report Builder: Buckets, Cross Filters, and Summary Formulas (Beta): – The second beta release of the Lightning Experience report builder lets you categorize report data with buckets, include or exclude results from related objects with cross filters, and summarize data in new ways with summary formula columns.
Set Up Call Monitoring (Beta): –Improve selling techniques by enabling Call Monitoring from the Dialer Settings page in Setup. This feature is new in Lightning Experience.
Call JavaScript Directly from Your Flow with Local Actions (Pilot): – Now you can pull data from an on-premises or private cloud database directly into your flow without going through the Salesforce server. Or do things directly in the browser, such as open a particular URL or confirm that a record was created with a toast message. With flow local actions, you can call the JavaScript controller of an associated Lightning component, which means you can integrate directly with the browser.
Encrypt Activities, Email Messages, Emails to Case, and Custom Object Name (Pilot): – Emails and time management tools play an important role in your day-to-day workflow. For another layer of security and compliance controls, you can now encrypt Activities, Email Messages, Email-to-Case messages, and Custom Object Name.

You can upload files from a flow by adding the forceContent:fileUpload Lightning component to a flow screen.This change applies to Lightning Experience and Salesforce mobile web. However, it only works for the Lightning flow runtime.

Lightning Experience is supported by Apple® Safari® version 11.x+ on Mac OS X. The most recent stable versions of Microsoft® Edge, Mozilla® Firefox®, and Google Chrome™ are also supported. Salesforce now offering Extended Support for IE11. This extended support is available through December 31, 2020. You ca not access Lightning Experience via a mobile browser.

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

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

Customers/Users Point of view

1. Supercharge Your Productivity with Personalized Navigation in Lightning Experience: – You can now personalize navigation in Lightning Experience is similar to customized tab sets in Salesforce Classic but better. In Lightning Experience, the navigation bar can contain more than just object-level items, like Accounts. You can add granular items, like a dashboard, list, or record.

Salesforce has given you more ways to navigate with temporary tabs. Use temporary tabs to access important items directly from the navigation bar. For example, open a frequently used dashboard in a temporary tab to access it instantly from anywhere.

2. Organize Lightning Page into Collapsible Sections: – Manage screen clutter by grouping components into collapsible sections. The new Accordion component is like the Tabs component, but vertically stacked. You can use the Accordion component on all record pages. This feature is new in Lightning Experience.

You can have up to 25 sections, but we recommend no more than 10. You can also embed multiple components in each section, each with its own heading.

3. See More Relevant Objects First in Top Results: – Top Results lists the most relevant results for your most frequently used objects. The improved ordering of objects means less scrolling and clicking around to the object you want and more getting work done. This change applies to Lightning Experience only.

In Top Results, objects are ranked according to the following factors.

Frequency – Prioritizes objects that you use most often. 
Search term – Prioritizes objects that are commonly associated with a search term. For example, a person’s name is more commonly associated with contact or user objects.

4. See the Most Relevant Reasons Behind Each Score: – Each lead score now more clearly shows which lead fields boost the score and which ones decrease it. Only fields that have a significant effect on the score are shown. This change applies to both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.

5. Generate Leads from LinkedIn: – Now you can add another source of leads for your sales team by connecting LinkedIn Lead Gen advertisements to Salesforce. When prospective customers fill out a form on your LinkedIn ad, Salesforce converts the data directly to new leads in Salesforce. This feature is new in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic. You can also able to assign the new leads to the user or queue you choose.

–> You can add up to 500 leads from LinkedIn per day. If the number of leads you get in a day exceeds the limit, Salesforce will email the additional leads to the default lead creator you designate in Setup.

6. Add Campaign Members Faster: – You can now quickly select, search for, and add leads, contacts, and person accounts to campaigns without leaving the campaign detail page. Previously, when you added leads, contacts, or person accounts, you were sent to the Leads or Contacts home pages, taking them away from the campaign details.

From the Campaign Members related list, click Add Leads or Add Contacts. A window displays the Recently Used list view, the use search box to find contacts or leads. This change applies to Lightning Experience only.

7. Add Products to Price Books Faster: – Now you can save time by adding up to 50 products to a price book in one go. This change applies to Lightning Experience only.

Just search for products by name and follow the steps below:

Select one or more products
To add to the price book – Review and remove selected products
Before continuing to the next page.

8. Increase Your Efficiency by Managing List Emails in One Place: – With the List Emails (Create and send a list email, which sends an individual email to each recipient in the list.) tab, your reps now manage all their list email tasks in one place. This change applies to Lightning Experience only.

9. Automatically Relate Important Meetings to Contacts and Leads: – Now it’s easy to track important sales meetings so that reps, coworkers, and managers can easily recall details. When reps invite a contact or lead to a meeting, you can set up those records to relate to the event automatically. This feature is new in Lightning Experience. This feature also requires Lightning Sync.

To enable this feature, click Setup | Feature Settings | Sales |Activity Settings, then select Auto-relate attendees to users’ events in Lightning Experience and Allow users to relate multiple contacts to tasks and events, as shown in the following screenshot:

10. Turn Emails from Unknown Addresses into Contacts, Leads, or Person Accounts : – When you receive an email from an address that doesn’t match an email in a record in Salesforce, now you can create a contact, lead, or person account (if Salesforce is set up with person accounts) directly from Lightning for Outlook. The flexibility to select the record type lets reps work how they want, or to align with your business processes for adding information to Salesforce. This change applies to both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.

11. Email Search has Finally Arrivedeply and Forward Email: – Searching for emails in Salesforce is now possible. Global Search in Lightning Experience for:

Bcc Address, Cc Address, From, Address, Subject, Text Body, To Address.
All custom fields of type text, text area, long text area, rich text area, email, and phone.

12. Case Path for Lightning Experience: – Use Path to set up a flow for Case records, allowing your agents to focus on the most critical information. With Case Path, you can determine and customize the stages that are important to your business. Include details about critical information for each stage of the Case plus tips for establishing and maintaining positive customer relationships, and even links to relevant feeds.

13. Chat Smarter with Lightning Knowledge: – Now agents can access the wealth of information in your Salesforce Knowledge base when chatting in Lightning Experience. Agents can search for articles in the Knowledge component and share knowledge articles with customers by attaching articles to the chat. This change applies to Lightning Experience only.

14. Subscribe to Dashboards to Schedule Refreshes and Get Email Updates: – Similar to report subscribe it is now possible to subscribe a dashboard. Now you can subscribe to the Sales Pipeline dashboard or any other dashboard and scheduled automatic dashboard refreshes each Monday at 9:00 AM.

Once dashboard is refreshed you will receive an up-to-date version of Sales Pipeline dashboard by email.

This feature is new in Lightning Experience.

15. Search for Folders with Salesforce Search: – Now it’s much easier to find the report and dashboard folders you’re looking for, now that folders are supported in global search. This feature is new in Lightning Experience.

Searching for folders in global search works just like you’d expect for other Salesforce objects. Only one extra step to remember: If the folder you’re looking for doesn’t appear in the search results, click Show More on the left side of the page, and select Folders to display the matching folders.

16. Automatically Remove Content After a Specific Time: – If you have a fabulous offer you want to advertise to your community members. The offer lasts two weeks, but you are on vacation when it ends and can’t get rid of the advertising content on the community. What to do? The expiring content feature to the rescue. You can now expose content that disappears after certain criteria are met. This component is available for use in Lightning communities.

Set the criteria as either a specific date and time or the number of dismissals. For example, if a message doesn’t jibe with community members, the component disappears after three dismissals.

17. Collaborate with Community Members with Quip: – Quip allows you to create, share, and collaborate on documents and spreadsheets within communities. After you set up Quip in your org, you can use the Quip component on community record pages to give community members access to records. Use integrated search to find Quip files and link to Salesforce records. You can create Quip documents and link them to records and groups.

18. Get In-App Notifications for Group Mentions: – Group members have a new opportunity to be more responsive when their group is @mentioned. Group mentions now trigger in-app notifications. Discover quickly what people want the group to be aware of. This feature is available in Lightning Experience and Lightning communities.

–> To be notified about group mentions, members must select Email on every post under Groups in their Chatter email notifications settings.

19. Preview Files on the Go: – Whether you are working on the go or in the office, you can use File Preview to get to your files. File Preview on Mobile gives you access to your files from your mobile phone or tablet. With options to view and download, you can have a seamless experience while you work from the office or from the road. This feature is available in Lightning Experience and Salesforce mobile web.

You can also download or view external files in Box, Google Drive, and Quip from Salesforce mobile web. Make sure that the app is installed on your device, you’re logged in to the external data source and the external app, and you have access to the file.

Additional enhancements worth noting!

1. Share Credit for a Deal in Lightning Experience: – In Lightning Experience, now sales reps can Add or adjust splits from the Opportunity Splits related list. This feature is new in Lightning Experience.

–> The opportunity’s owner or users above the owner in your hierarchy can add and adjust splits.

2. Add Account Team Members to Opportunity Teams: – Streamline opportunity team creation by adding account team members to the opportunity team in one click.

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

3. New Permission Required to Access the Forecasts Page in Lightning Experience: – Users now need the View Roles and Role Hierarchy permission to access the forecasts page in Lightning Experience. This permission is assigned to all forecast users by default.

Administrators/Developers Point of view

1. Deactivate Orgs You Don’t Use: – When an org has outlived its usefulness and it’s time to move on, you can deactivate it. When you deactivate an org, you have 30 days to change your mind and reactivate it. After 30 days, the org is locked, and you must contact Salesforce Customer Support to reactivate it. After 60 days, the org is permanently deleted from Salesforce servers.

–> If the org has released a managed package, then you can not deactivate it. This change applies to Developer and Database.com Editions.

2. Make Your Lightning App and Home Pages Dynamic: – Setting visibility conditions for components isn’t limited to record pages anymore. Now you can set visibility rules on the Lightning app and Home pages too.

App and Home pages are not associated with an object, so the filters you can use are limited to other contexts, such as User or Client. But that does not mean that they are less powerful. For instance, with a filter using you can display one component to users those belongs to India, etc.

3. Include Related Fields and Other Objects in Component Visibility Rules: – Before Spring’18 release, you could only define component visibility rules on Lightning record pages based on the fields directly on the record. Now you can create filters that are much more robust.

For example, on record pages, you can select fields from the record by clicking Record Field. Or click Advanced to expand your field selections to related fields, related objects, or fields from other objects such as Client and User.

4. Assign Separate Standard Action Overrides for Different Experiences: – The action override screen for standard actions, like New, View, and Edit, has gotten a makeover. Now you can easily assign different overrides for Salesforce Classic, Lightning Experience, and mobile. For example, for the same standard action, you can set a Visualforce page override in Salesforce Classic, a Lightning page override in Lightning Experience, and a Lightning component overrides in mobile.

This change applies to Lightning Experience, Salesforce Classic, and all versions of the Salesforce app.

5. Access Schema Settings in Setup: – You can now manage the availability of the list custom settings type when creating custom settings. The list type provides a reusable set of static data that you can access across your org. To prevent creating custom settings when using application-level data definitions, disable this option in Setup.

If you want to use the list setting type, then you can enable the option in Schema Settings, as shown in the preceding screenshot.

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

A) Build Richer Flow Screens with Lightning Components: – Now that flow screens have Lightning components, you can build flow screens that look and behave any way that you want. This feature is new in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic. However, it only works for Lightning flow runtime.

You can only able to add components that implement the new lightning:availableForFlowScreens interface and has a corresponding design resource, it iss available as a Lightning component screen field.

B) Override the Default Header and Footer on Flow Screens: – After spring’18 release it is possible to remove the default header/footer on a flow screen or customize the navigation buttons at the bottom. This feature is new in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic. However, it only works for Lightning flow runtime.

To remove the header and footer, deselect Show Header and Show Footer when you configure a flow screen. If you remove the footer, the screen’s navigation buttons do not appear. Make sure to add a custom Lightning component that lets users navigate from the screen to another one

C) Some Flow Types Have New Labels: – To remove the confusion, Salesforce has updated the label for the Flow type to Screen Flow. That means we can avoid saying “a flow of type Flow.”

D) Launch a Flow from an Object-Specific Action (Generally Available): – You can now add flows to the action (Launch a Flow from an Object-Specific Action) 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.

E) Resume Paused Interviews That Other Users Own: – The person who starts an interview is not always the person who should finish it. Maybe a community user starts a flow but an agent must finish it, or maybe one department starts a flow and another one finishes it. Users can now resume any interview that they have edit access to not just the ones they own. Interview sharing is enabled by default. Previously, you could create sharing rules only from the API, and only the owner or a flow admin could resume an interview.

The default sharing model for interviews is Private, which means that users inherit edit access from users lower in the role hierarchy. If your org uses a role hierarchy, users can resume all interviews that users lower in the hierarchy own or have edit access to. To restrict who can resume paused interviews, go to your org’s Process Automation settings in Setup and disable Let users resume shared flow interviews. When this setting is disabled, only the interview owner or flow admin who has view access can resume the interview.

F) Resume Paused Flow Interviews from Lightning Experience: – With the new Paused Flow Interviews component in the Lightning App Builder, Lightning Experience users can resume interviews directly from the Home page. This change applies to Lightning Experience only.

The Paused Flow Interviews component is supported only on Home page.

G) Associate Paused Flow Interviews with a Record: – Get a single view of all interviews associated with a given customer, case, or record. When a user pauses an interview or an interview executes a Wait element, the interview is associated with the record through the FlowRecordRelation object.

To associate your flow with a record, set the {!$Flow.CurrentRecord} system variable to a valid record ID in an Assignment element. To display all interviews associated with a given record, create a custom Lightning component and add the component to the record page.

7. Start Flows Dynamically from Apex: – Before Spring’18 release, you could start a flow interview from Apex, but you had to hardcode the flow name in your method. Which means for every flow, you had to write a different method. With createInterview(), you can write one method to start an interview for any flow.

For example, the following code expects a flow name and a map of values for the flow’s input variables. It passes those values into an Interview object by using createInterview(), and then it starts the interview.

public void callFlow(String flowName, Map <String, Object> inputs) {
  Flow.Interview myFlow = Flow.Interview.createInterview(flowName, inputs);
  myFlow.start();
}

8. Take Full Control of Your Login Process with Visualforce Page Login Flows: -Go beyond customizing the login page with your logo, colors, and right-side content. Use Visualforce to design more elaborate login flows that you couldn’t accomplish before.

You have been able to create login flows using the Salesforce point-and-click tool, Cloud Flow Designer. Now you can also create login flows programmatically using Visualforce and Apex controllers and gain more flexibility. With a Visualforce Page login flow, you design the login page from scratch and determine each pixel of the page.

To create a Visualforce Page login flow, the Visualforce developer creates a login flow controller that defines the business process. The Apex controller must contain one of two new finishLoginFlow methods to indicate when the login flow is done and where to redirect the user upon completion.

Auth.SessionManagement.finishLoginFlow() redirects users to the default home page.
Auth.SessionManagement.finishLoginFlow(startURL) redirects users to a specified page in the community.

A login flow runs in a restricted session. Calling finishLoginFlow removes the session restriction, which gives users access to their community.

9. Use without sharing for @AuraEnabled Apex Controllers with Implicit Sharing (Critical Update): – This critical update changes the behavior of @AuraEnabled Apex controllers that do not specify with sharing or without sharing to default to without sharing. This change relaxes the security for controllers that do not explicitly set sharing behavior using these keywords. It is a best practice to always use with sharing in Apex controllers used with Lightning components.

10. Apex: Platform Cache now Available in Lightning: – You can now use Platform Cache in Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic. Previously, only Salesforce Classic was supported. Using Platform Cache can significantly improve the performance of your applications. Read this article to learn more about Platform Cache.

11. Simplify Your Visualforce Lightning Experience Rollout: – The Lightning Experience Visualforce Report now gives you more information and recommendations to help you get your pages ready for Lightning Experience. The report identifies which of your Visualforce pages are overrides, tabs, embedded pages, or dashboard components. It also provides styling recommendations and next steps to take to give your Visualforce pages the look and feel of Lightning Experience. This change applies to both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.

You will also get the estimate, how much time and effort our Visualforce recommendations require. Estimations are based on the average number of hours that specific Visualforce migration tasks take.

12. Detect the Lightning Console UI Theme in Visualforce Pages: – Your Visualforce pages can detect whether they’re loaded in Lightning apps with console navigation versus Lightning apps with standard navigation. This feature is new in Lightning Experience.

Check for the Theme4u value in UI context detection logic in the console, for example, using the $User.UITheme and $User.UIThemeDisplayed global variables.

13. Delete Field History and Field Audit Trail Data: – New user permissions, Delete From Field History and Delete From Field History Archive, can now be enabled.

Delete field history data, such as AccountHistory, and field history archive data by passing in a list of Id values as strings using Apex or SOAP delete(). Apex delete() also works with a list of sObjects with the Id field populated.

List<FieldHistoryArchive> fhadelete = new List<sObject>();
    fhadelete.addAll([SELECT FieldHistoryType, ParentId, CreatedDate, HistoryId FROM FieldHistoryArchive 
        WHERE FieldHistoryType = 'Account' AND ParentId = '001d000000Ky3xIAB' AND CreatedDate = '2017-11-28T19:13:36.000z' AND HistoryId = '017D000000ESURXIA5']);

Database.delete(fhadelete);

14. Collect Debug Logs for Guest Users Without Setting Cookies: – In Winter ’17, Salesforce introduced a change that required guest users to set browser cookies to activate debug logging. Salesforce had the best of intentions: All your public site visitors share one guest user license. Thus, when you enable logging for the guest user, the visitors’ collective activities can fill your debug logs quickly, hitting the log-size limit and causing log truncation. Sadly, people did not like the Winter ’17 change. Setting cookies is complicated, and the change made collecting debug logs for public users’ asynchronous activity impossible. Now your public users no longer need a debug_logs browser cookie to trigger logging. This change applies to both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.

15. Get the Same Behavior for Global Value Sets and Standard Value Sets in Managed Package Upgrades: – The behavior of global values sets in managed package upgrades is now consistent with the behavior of standard value sets for easier maintenance.

Salesforce has changed the behavior of global value sets in managed package upgrades to match the behavior of standard value sets.

Label and API names for individual values don’t change in subscriber orgs. This behavior is new in this release.
New values aren’t added to the subscriber orgs.
Active and Inactive value settings in the subscriber orgs don’t change.
Default values in the subscriber orgs don’t change.
Global value set label names change if the package upgrade includes a new label value.

16. Alert Users Before They are Redirected Outside Salesforce: – Protect your users from malicious links and phishing! Alert them with a warning message when they click links that take them outside the salesforce.com domain. This change applies to both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.

17. Retrieve and Deploy Compact Layouts for External Objects: – You can now use Metadata API to retrieve and deploy compact layouts for external objects. This change applies to both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.

Before Spring’18 release, the following Metadata API fields and type were not available for external objects.

The compactLayoutAssignment and compactLayouts fields on the CustomObject type
The CompactLayout type

Salesforce1 Enhancements

Users have several options for accessing Salesforce1 on mobile devices.

Install Salesforce for Android or iOS. Users can download the app from Google Play or the App Store.
Access Salesforce mobile web from a supported mobile browser on supported Android, iOS, and Windows devices. This option doesn’t require anything to be installed.

1. Legacy Charts for Salesforce Mobile Will Retire in Spring ’18 – Legacy Charts have been part of the Salesforce for Android, Salesforce for iOS, and Salesforce mobile web experience for many years, but let’s bid them farewell. Enhanced Charts, the mobile version of Lightning Experience charts, have replaced Legacy Charts in Salesforce for Android, Salesforce for iOS, and Salesforce mobile web. This change applies to all versions of the Salesforce app.

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

In Spring ’18, Salesforce for Android, Salesforce for iOS, and Salesforce mobile web include only Enhanced Charts, and you can’t switch back to Legacy Charts.
Orgs created during or after the Summer ’16 release already have Enhanced Charts as the only charts experience for Salesforce for Android, Salesforce for iOS, and Salesforce mobile web. For these orgs, nothing changes.
The legacy Charts retirement doesn’t affect charts in the full Salesforce site (Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience).

2. Add Style to Posts and Comments on the Go (Pilot): – Now rich text editor has come to Salesforce mobile. Instead of the plodding sameness of plain text posts, users can add emphasis, personality, and lists. Use the editor when you compose or edit posts, comments, questions, and answers. This change also means that you can edit the posts you added from your desktop when you’re on the go. This feature is new in all versions of the Salesforce app.

3. Feeds Tab Renamed on Your Mobile Devices: – The Feeds tab on the records you view from your mobile device are now labeled Chatter. This feature is new in all versions of the Salesforce app.

4. See More on the Go with Enterprise Territory Management: – Mobile reps now get the Users in Assigned Territories related list on accounts. This change applies to all versions of the Salesforce app.

5. See Einstein Insights About Your Accounts and Opportunities (Pilot): – Einstein Insights are now available when you are on the go! Stay informed with insights about your accounts. See predictions about which deals are likely to be won, reminders to follow up, and notifications when key moments in a deal take place. Reps can take action directly from the insights, including editing the related record or sending emails to relevant contacts. This change applies to Salesforce for iOS and Salesforce for Android.

–> You need Sales Cloud Einstein licenses to view insights in the mobile app. Sharing actions, activity timeline details, and suggested contact insights are available in Lightning Experience only.

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

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