The Top 7 Spring '11 Features Worth the Wait
Email Attachments & Associations
One great feature of Salesforce.com is Email to Salesforce which allows the user to BCC emails from any email client to Salesforce and have them automatically associated to the right records. In Spring '11 this features gets better by also dealing with any file attached to the email and by creating a new place to deal with any unresolved emails. No longer will you have to hunt and peck through all those "Unresolved Email:" tasks.
Dashboard Profile Pictures & Alerts
On the analytic side Dashboards get two upgrades which should prove useful and fun. The first is the ability to create a user dashboard and have it display the users Chatter profile picture. This should make for more personal charts and encourage a lot more professional pictures. The second builds on the ability to follow entire dashboards by enabling users to follow individual dashboard components. Changed dashboards can now show up in your feed so you never lose another update.
Chatter @Mentions & Emails
Speaking of Chatter, the new darling of Salesforce.com, it too gets a bunch of new updates from mobile to groups. The two that I know will be an instant productivity increase for me are mentions and email replies. With @Mentions users can now reference other Chatter users following the Twitter functionality. Entering an @ sign will start a dynamic lookup of Chatter users that both notifies the user and provides a clickable link to their profile. Also in Spring '11 is the ability to reply to Chatter alert emails which will go back into Salesforce.com and be attached to the update. These two will definitely help keep the conversation going and make Chatter a more and more powerful collaborative tool.
Google Chrome Browser Support
The browser wars might be over but nobody has told Google as they keep putting out a great product in Google Chrome. In Spring '11 Google Chrome will get official support so things like meeting requests and the dashboard builder should now work instead of failing miserably. In terms of internet browsers Google Chrome brings a speed, stability and extendability that keep it in my dock right next to Safari.
These are just a few of the plethora of features coming in February. Tweet me back at @JasonMAtwood and let me know what is going to tickle your fancy.
