Salesforce.com Spring '10 Release Highlights

There are some really great new additions in the Spring '10 release from salesforce.com which rolls out in February. If you are already a salesforce.com customer, you've paid for on-going feature enhancements. Most of the features are deployed in a dormant state, meaning you have to enable them and in many cases, configure them. Get the most out of your investment by leveraging new features as they come out. We had a chance to review the development, platform and application enhancements coming with Spring '10. Highlights we found most interesting for the Spring '10 release follow.

Sales Cloud 2:

Service Cloud 2:

Mobile Enhancements:

• Mobile Lite is now available free for all editions including Contact Manager and Group Edition!  Can now create, edit and delete standard objects. Previously read-only.
• iPhones Filter & Search - every tab/list has filter/search box (for iPhone application only)
• Link to Records for Blackerry - more easily access your records.

Force.com Platform:

• Multi-Level Master-Detail Relationships - This is a great addition.  Now you can create roll-up summary fields that pull data up multiple levels.  Can roll-up across formula fields.  Translates to reports as well.
• Person Email Workflow - When workflow dictates that an email is sent, you can now control who it comes from.. the default user or another user.
• New User Interface - fully CSS Driven. Opt in or Opt out. Applies to Visualforce Components. Org level permission (all users have the same theme/skin) and is not customizable.  Does not affect page behavior (just look & feel).
• New Translation Workbench - easier interface for translating your customer labels and text
• Rich Text Support - Rich Text Area custom field type (Beta for Spring '10).  Can include formatting (e.g. bold, underline, strikethrough, bullets, hyperlinks, images).
• My Domain (pilot) - personalize your salesforce URL (e.g., http://[your domain].salesforce.com)
• Authenticated Sites - new license type to support large volumes of users (e.g., ecommerce sites)

Changes for Developers:

• API Enhancements for SOQL Date Functions - 13 new functions including: calendar_month, calendar_quarter, calendar_year, day_in_month, day_in_week, day_in_year, day_only, fiscal_year to make it easier to create easier to use SOQL statements for developer. Not available to workflow, just for SOQL programming.
• API Enhancements - introduction of Group By clauses and Having clauses
• New Aggregate Functions: Avg, Min, Max, Sum, Count_Distinct
• New XML Classes for Apex Code - no longer have to write test code to process XML in package
• Code Scheduler - can schedule code to run at future times (specify start and end dates, and days of week, month and time of day (GA for Spring '10)
• Line Numbers in web editor - every tried to find the line when you get an error, this will help a lot!
• IDE Upgrades - works in Eclipse 3.4 (Galileo) and additional metadata support.
• Apex - No limit on collection size (was a limit of 1K items per collection)
• Logging and Debugging Enhancements - accessed via System Log in UI.  More control over items logged.  Execute Apex box as well.
• S-Controls Deprecated. No more S-Controls can be created after Spring '10; existing S-Controls will still run.  Unmanaged packages with S-Controls created before 1/1/2010 can still be installed.  Visualforce is the technology that replaces S-Controls.
• Packaged Custom UI - ability to package action overrides on standard buttons (in Pilot for Spring '10) 

Questions?  Contact Us to see how these changes can improve your results.  If you want a little or a lot of help implementing these features or features from past editions (see Winter '10 release features), take a look at our cost-effective salesforce.com support packages.