Winter 13 Release Notes Rapid Reaction
Like any Salesforce.com evangelist I wait with baited breath for the three times a year when Salesforce unveils their next itertation of CRM genius. Okay, so maybe it’s not all genius, and perhaps my breath isn’t baited, but I do look forward to reading all about the newest features, enhancements, and tools available in the Winter 13 release - all 179 pages of it! As the newest edition to the Arkus team, I was thrilled that I was asked to provide my favorite new features being rolled out in the next release - Winter 13. Many of you will be happy to know that a whopping 75% of them have nothing to do with Chatter.
Shared Activities
While none of of my favorite features are Earth shattering, or will revolutionize the way you work, most of them are answers to our most asked questions: Why can’t multiple contacts be linked to one event? Either Salesforce read “Salesforce Hears a Who?” - in which Larry Salvatoriello reamed Salesforce for their inaction. Or, maybe they finally listened to the 52,000 votes this idea got on the IdeaExchange. But however we got here, we’re here! This will allow users to relate as many as 10 contacts to a single, non recurring event. Now there are no more excuses for inactivity.
Polls for Chatter
Arkus is a Chatter centric company. We Chatter day and night, sometimes about important things - status on a project - and sometimes about silly/fun things we should all know - usually with the hashtag(#) #AwesomeSauce. We’re also very democratic in our approach to making decisions. I can think of three examples just from last week when this feature would have come in handy. For example, “What should be the name of our compliance App?” With Chatter Polls, you can now create a Poll directly inside the chatter feed. What’s next? How about adding numbers and colors to the poll results? Vote here!
Customizing Opportunity Teams
There are so many enhancements within the new Opportunity Teams I don’t even know where to start. I’d say I’m most excited about the idea of automatic notifications to team members. Just getting a notification when you’ve been added to a team would eliminate the need for manual email/chat/message/Chatter. Come Winter ‘13 you’ll also be able to add custom fields, email Opportunity Team Members, track time spent by the Opportunity Team on the Opportunity... the list goes on. Now if we can just make the Contact Roles related list as flexible.
Exporting Joined Reports
About two years ago I took a hiatus from complaining about Salesforce’s massive reporting gap - often considered their weakest link. But in that time, I have to admit that they have come a looooong way in closing that gap. With joined reports, bucket reports, the updated drag and drop interface, I can’t complain. I would have to agree with @NHagen who said this on the IdeaExchange - “This seems like a no brainer...” Now you can export your joined reports to excel and do all the massaging you want.
The Winter ‘13 Release notes are packed with many more exciting new features. Check them out and let us know which ones you would have listed as your favorite. Feel free to comment below, comment on our Facebook Page or hit me up at @StaciRice8.
