Today Salesforce published Spring’15 release notes. The Spring’15 release of Salesforce.com is now in available under pre-release program. On 09th & 10th January Sandboxes will be upgraded so that your organization get the look and feel of Spring’15 release. In this release you can find lot’s of enhancement related to Work.com, Salesforce1 and Visual flow. Now Duplicate Alerts and Blocking is Generally available, it allows you to control whether and when you can allow users to create duplicate records inside Salesforce, customize the logic that’s used to identify duplicates, and create reports on the duplicates you want the users to save. Another big enhancement is Process Builder now generally available, it’s a workflow tool that helps you easily automate everything from daily tasks, like creating a new record, follow-up emails, trigger flows. Beginning Summer’15 Salesforce is going to discontinue support for Microsoft® Internet Explorer® versions 7 and 8. Below are the quick summary of Spring’15 release from user’s / customer’s
Customer/User’s Point of view :–
1. Add Rich Text Notes to Records (Beta) : – Now with Notes, users can add bulleted and numbered lists to notes. User have option to follow the notes and share it with “People” or “Chatter Groups”(As shown in the following screenshot). To enable/disable this feature follow the path Setup | Build | Customize | Notes | Settings and select “Enable Notes” checkbox.
Notes new UI
2. Add Public Groups to delegated administrator :- Now delegated administrators can create public groups, and you can specify public groups in which delegated administrators can add and remove users in specified roles and all subordinate roles.
3. Create or Edit Records Owned by Inactive Users :- After Spring’15 release, system administrators and all users with the create or edit permission can create or edit accounts, opportunities, and custom object records that are owned by inactive users. Previously, only administrators were able to edit accounts, opportunities, and custom object records that are owned by inactive users.
4. Duplicate Management (Generally Avalaible) : – To maintain clean and accurate data in your organization, Salesforce introduced Duplicate Alerts and Blocking with Data.com. It provides a way to control whether and when you want to allow users to create duplicate records inside Salesforce, customize the logic that’s used to identify duplicates, and create reports on the duplicates you do allow users to save.
Duplicate Management
5 New Salesforce Files Setup Node for Files and Content :- Files and Content have a new home in Setup! Now, you can manage all your Files and Content settings under a single Salesforce Files node. Previously, these settings pages were widely dispersed across Setup.
6 Emoticons Added in the Feed :- Now your users can add expressions like a smiley face to their posts and comments by typing a character combination. To enable/disable this feature follow the path Setup | Build | Customize | Chatter | Settings and select “Allow Emoticons” checkbox. Emoticons aren’t supported in Salesforce1.
Emotions in Feed
7 Add records to Chatter Groups : – Adding records to groups allows users to collaborate on and discuss the records as a team in the group. To add records to chatter groups you have to customize the chatter group layout and add the Add Record action to the group publisher, as shown in the following screenshot
Add records to Chatter Groups
8 Feed with a New Task Action: – It allow users to create New Task action directly from a post in their feed.
New task action
9. Subscribe to Receive Report Notifications (Generally Avalaible) : – After Spring’15 release users can now sign up for report notifications, to stay up-to-date on the metrics they care about most. To subscribe a report click on subscribe button and the conditions, action and schedule frequency. Each user can subscribe to up to five reports.
Subscribe Report
10. Supported Languages Changed and Added : – Two languages (Croatian, Slovene) have been promoted from platform-only languages to end user languages. Salesforce have we’ve added 46 new platform-only languages.
11. Sales Path: – Get sales reps to close deals faster by guiding them through your company’s sales process, so your reps can get their opportunities to the next stage.
12. Report on Chatter Usage : – The Salesforce Chatter Dashboards package gives administrators an essential set of dashboards and reports to keep tabs on Chatter activity. Administrators can gain insights from the latest metrics and rapidly spot trends. The Salesforce Chatter Dashboards package will be available on AppExchange shortly after Spring ’15.
13. Products Now Have Field History Tracking : – After Spring’15 release Products will have field history tracking. You can select certain Product fields to track and the changes made in the field will be displayed in the History related list.
Developer Point of view:-
1. Indexed Column Added to Lists of Fields in Setup : – Listings of fields in Setup include a new Indexed column that indicates when a field is indexed in the database. The new column is available for standard and custom objects and indicates indexing for standard and custom fields.
Indexed Column
2. Assets Object Redesigned as a Standard Object :- The Assets object is used to tracks products that your customers own. The Assets object has been enhanced in Spring’15 release to give your users a more robust way to manage assets. Previously, the Assets object was a child object of the Accounts object. After Spring’15 release the Assets object has been redesigned as a standard object and has the same features, including a tab, sharing settings and record types, as a standard object.
Assets Tabs
3. Submit More Batch Jobs with Apex Flex Queue (Generally Available) :- Now you can submit up to 100 batch jobs simultaneously and actively manage the order of the queued jobs to control which batch jobs are processed first. This enhancement provides you more flexibility in managing your batch jobs.
4. Make Apex Callouts with More Data :- The callout size limit for requests and responses has been increased to the heap size limit. With a larger callout size for requests and responses, you can send and receive more data from an external Web service. Following compares the old and new limits for callout request and response sizes.
Increased Callout Size Limits
5. Set Up Test Data for an Entire Test Class :- You can reduce test execution times especially when you’re working with many records. Test setup methods enable you to create common test data easily and efficiently. By setting up records once for the class, you don’t need to re-create records for each test method. If a test class contains a test setup method, the testing framework executes the test setup method first, before any test method in the class. Records that are created in a test setup method are available to all test methods in the test class and are rolled back at the end of test class execution. @testSetup static void methodName() { }
6. Visual Flow and Process Builder Enhancement :- There are several enhancements in Visual workflow, those are followings
A) Users Pause Flow Interviews :- Now you can allow your users to pause their flows. A user might pause a flow when a call gets dropped or a customer needs to find her account number and call back. Users can resume the interview when it’s time to proceed. An interview is a running instance of a flow.
Pause Flow
B) Customize the Condition Logic in Flows :- Same like with reports and workflow criteria, you can now customize the logic between all of the conditions for a given outcome or wait event in a flow. To customize the condition logic for a wait event or an outcome in a decision, select Advanced logic (combination of ANDs and ORs).
Condition Logic in Flows
C) Reference the ID of a Chatter Post That a Flow Created :- If you create Chatter posts in a flow, you can now use the created feed item’s ID later in that flow. For example, provide the user with a link to the new feed item. Assign Feed Item ID to a flow variable when you configure the “Post to Chatter” element.
D) Create Versions of a Process :- Now if you want to make changes to an existing process, just clone it. You can save the clone as a new process with its own version history or as a new version of the current process. While a given process can have up to 50 versions, only one of those versions can be active.
E) Call an Apex Method from a Process :- Now you can add customized functionality to your Salesforce processes by calling an Apex method. To call an Apex method, add the Call Apex action to your process and select an Apex class with an invocable method.
F) Trigger a Process Multiple Times in a Single Transaction :- Before Spring’15 release when a record changed, the process always evaluated it with the specified criteria and executed an action group only once. This means that if another process, workflow rule, or flow changed the record, the process wouldn’t immediately evaluate the criteria again and wouldn’t apply to any changes made by other processes. Now your processes can (optionally) evaluate the same record up to five additional times if another process, workflow rule, or flow updates the record in the same transaction.
7. Visualforce Enhancement :- There are several enhancements in Visual workflow, those are followings
A) New Attributes for <flow:interview> :- Available in API version 33.0 and later, the <flow:interview> components supports a new attribute: allowShowPause. Use this attribute to customize your users’ experience when pausing flows.
B) Use Visualforce Map Components to Show Location Data More Clearly :- Visualforce mapping components make it simple to create maps that use third-party mapping services. Create Visualforce maps with a set of related mapping components. <apex:map> defines a map canvas, including map size, type, center point, and initial zoom level. <apex:mapMarker> child components define markers to place on the map, by address or geolocation (latitude and longitude). Visualforce mapping components aren’t currently available in Developer Edition organizations.
8. Streamline Managed Packages by Deleting Unused Components :- When updating a managed package, you (this feature only available for Salesforce partners) can now delete Visualforce pages, Visualforce components, and static resources. By removing components that are no longer used by the app, you reduce its complexity and help create a more streamlined user experience for your subscribers. The ability to delete these components.
9. New Components Available for Change Sets :- After Spring’15 release the following components are now available for change sets Action Link Group Template, Matching Rule and Named Credential.
10. The Named Credential component is now available in managed and unmanaged packages. Add a named credential to a package to enable authenticated Apex callouts in the subscriber organization to specify the named credential as the callout endpoint.
Salesforce1 Enhancement:–
Note :- You can download release notes in HTML format! http://goo.gl/9KHSz9 and for PDF format http://goo.gl/sMIOaz
