Jan
18
Salesforce.com Spring '11 Release Highlights
Like all prior salesforce.com releases, there are tons of great new additions in the Spring '11 release. akaCRM team members have been involved in thousands of salesforce.com initiatives over the past decade, so we are always looking for the features that we know will be most highly used and appreciated by salesforce.com customers. This article highlights some of the best new features with the Spring '11 release which rolls out in February (see release schedule). As we always note, 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. Highlights we found most interesting for the Spring '11 release follow.
Sales Cloud Enhancements:
- Activity Attachment Enhancements - Attachments on emails that are sent using Email to Salesforce or Salesforce for Outlook can now be saved with the email's task record in Salesforce.
- Email to Salesforce Enhancements - Users can now further specify what happens when emails are sent to Salesforce. Options include sending to My Unresolved Items so you can manually assign them or whether you'd like for Salesforce to try to automatically assign them.
- Salesforce for Outlook Enhancements - administrators can now notify users when product updates are available.
- Sorting of Opportunity Products - You can now sort products in the Products related list on an opportunity.
Service Cloud Enhancements:
- Multi-language support for Knowledge - you can translate articles into multiple languages so customers and support agents can find content in their preferred language.
- Salesforce Knowledge Sidebar - Console users can see a sidebar that displays titles of Knowledge articles that may solve the case they're working on. It automatically searches and returns articles that match any of the words typed in the Subject of a case. (Enterprise, Unlimited, Developer with the Service Cloud)
- Knowledge Article Number - All articles are now automatically assigned a unique Article Number to better identify, search and report on articles.
- Version 3.0 of CTI Toolkit - now available with Spring '11
Collaboration Cloud Enhancements:
- Free Chatter Users - As announced at Dreamforce, each salesforce.com organization can now provide ALL of its employees with Chatter Free user licenses. Chatter Free users can access People, Profiles, Groups and Files. You can upgrade a Chatter Free license at anytime to either a full standard Salesforce license or to the Chatter Plus (formally known as Chatter Only) which for a nominal additional cost adds read-only access to Accounts and Contacts, full task and activities functionality (delegate tasks to/from these users), access to up to 10 custom objects, Content, Ideas and Answers.
- Chatter Desktop - If you haven't already downloaded the Chatter Desktop application, do it now. It supports all editions. Without logging into salesforce.com see the private feed for your organization's collaboration cloud. Spring'11 includes a managed version for enterprise deployments. Download it from Setup|MySetup|Desktop Integration|Chatter Desktop. Support is provided for both PC and Mac users.
- Chatter Triggers - Now both the Comments and Feeds can trigger actions.'
- Popup Notifications - these are now supported.
- @Mentions - When you post an update in Chatter, you can mention a person's name to make sure that person sees your update (e.g., Contact @Brian Connell for the latest on our new sales process).
- Live Updates - The message "You have new updates" now appears at the top of the fee when you have new feeds.
- Private File Sharing - now you can share a file privately so only specific Chatter users in your company can see it. Privately shared files display the privately shared icon.
- Email Notifications for File Sharing - You can now automatically send an email notification to an individual when you share a file with them through Chatter.
- Trending Topics - The Chatter tab now includes a Trending Topics area to show what your coworkers are discussing right now.
- Chatter Mobile - support for Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch on iOS4.0 or higher; beta for BlackBerry 5 OS or higher; Pilot for a mobilized Web version of Chatter.
- Recommended Records/Enhanced People Recommendations - In addition to recommending people and groups, Chatter now recommends records to follow. Additionally, Chatter now recommends people to follow based on shared interest in records.
- Follow Dashboard Components - You can now follow certain dashboard components.
Mobile Enhancements:
- Mobile Usage Data - you can now create reports on how your organization uses Salesforce Mobile. For example, show how often users access Mobile, which device models are in use, wireless carrier, device manufacturer and other attributes.
Force.com Platform:
Criteria-based Sharing Rules - can now create sharing of record based on data within the record! This is a big one! Records can now be shared based on owner or CRITERIA. Create criteria-based sharing for accounts, contacts, opportunities, cases and custom objects. You can create up to 50 criteria-based rules per object using any of the following as criteria for sharing: Record Types, auto-number, checkbox, date, date/time, email, number, percent, phone, picklist, text, text area, URL and Lookup Relationships.- Report Builder Enhancements - Group and Professional Editions can use report builder as well as Force.com and Platform licenses. Additionally, a new chart type is available: scatter charts.
- Google Chrome Support - Spring '11 provides official support for the Google Chrome browser.
- Higher Limits for Dynamic Dashboards - Dynamic dashboards are now available in Enterprise Edition which can have up to 5 per organization; limits for Unlimited Edition are increased to 10 per organization. Developer Edition is limited to 3.
- Dashboard Alerts - Follow individual dashboard components in Chatter.
- Profile Photos on Dashboards - now you can show Chatter user and group photos on horzontal bar charts and tables in dashboards.
- Security Enhancements - You can now have salesforce.com remember up to 15 passwords. Additionally new permission for profiles to delegate the ability to reset user passwords and unlock users.
Changes for Developers:
- Revised Apex Governor Limits - down to only 16 governor limits with Spring '11 from 52 in Winter '11 and 78 in Summer '10. Fewer restrictions, more flexibility.
- Field Sets - In Beta with Spring'11. Combined power of VisualForce with Page Layouts. Admins can now change the look/feel of a VisualForce page without changing a single line of code. Supported for both standard and custom objects.
- Javascript Remoting - In Developer Preview. Leverages external Javascript libraries.
- Visual Workflow - Now in general release.
- REST API - Now in general release.
- Change Set - Now in general release.
More on the release at the salesforce.com Spring '11 release website.
Questions? There are a lot more features added with Spring'11, so if you have questions or want help, 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 our Winter'11 release features, Spring'10 release features and Winter '10 release features articles), take a look at our cost-effective salesforce.com support packages.
