Salesforce.com Winter 14 Release Notes Rapid Reaction

It’s that time of the year once again where we Salesforce geeks get to dig in and read some release notes. This time around for Winter 14 we got overwhelmed with 309 pages worth of Salesforce goodness. Here are a few of my favorite features as well as a few that are extremely impactful in the ecosystem that is Force.com. Keep in mind we will be doing some tweaks this time around with our release notes blog posts so watch for specific posts in the near future about Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Permission Sets (an Arkus favorite feature). 

New Chatter Profile Page

We were told way back during Dreamforce 12 that Salesforce is moving in the direction of working within the Chatter feed. The start of this movement was with publisher actions and it’s going a step further in the Winter 14 release with a new Chatter Profile page. The new Profile page includes subtabs. At the onset there will be two native default subtabs. The first is the feed that we all know and love and the second is the overview. The overview will include information such as the groups the user belongs to, followers, recent topics, about me, and also any activity that the user has going on within Communities. This new look for the Profile page is just the start to a revamp of how we all work within Salesforce and I’m sure there will be more to come on this at Dreamforce 13. 

More Search Options in Enhanced Lookups

When searching for records using enhanced lookups you will now be able to utilize any “searchable” field on the record you are trying to find. I cannot tell you how often that people ask me why they have to search for the “Name” of the record, particularly auto-number fields. It’s almost impossible to remember that you are looking for “INV-20090212” when trying to fill out a lookup for a custom object. By selecting “All Fields” within the enhanced lookup search dialog you will be able to enter in search terms unique to that particular record, the example used in the release notes is searching for a Contact’s email address. This is a huge usability enhancement. 

Salesforce Console for Sales

For those that are familiar with the Service Cloud this concept is going to sound very familiar and also sound like a feature that is a total no brainer. It’s got all the features that the Service Cloud console has for Cases but this time around it’s for Leads. You have the highlights panel for important fields, the list views on the left side of the screen with the records loading in a separate “tab” within the application, and the ability to open related data in those subtabs. This makes for navigation between multiple Leads and Activities seamless. A sales user should have a ball with this feature which will allow for a much more productive experience when it comes to calling on lots of Leads. 

Not only is this a great feature but it’s being rolled out with an Arkus favorite Permission Set License. A new type of Permission Set which includes a license to use a particular feature. When thinking about these think about all those checkboxes on the User record like “Marketing User” or “Flow User” and then think to yourself, wouldn’t that be easier to just assign a Permission Set? Well, the new Salesforce Console for Sales rolls out with a Permission Set License making it both easy to assign to individual users but also insinuates that the Console will be coming with an additional cost. 

Embedded Analytics

You can now embed up to two report charts on any detail page within Salesforce. The report charts understand the context that they are in so for example if you had a report that had a chart of all open Cases by Status and then embedded that chart within your Account page layout, Salesforce is smart enough to understand that the chart should be filtered to only show open Cases by Status for just that Account you are currently looking at. For years Users have been clamoring for more dynamic page layouts with embedded visualizations. These embedded charts are a fantastic way to see data and remove some of those custom buttons that you know you’ve created over the years that pass Users over to a custom report with a predefined filter for the ID of the record that they are coming from. These visualizations should make Users very happy.

Custom State and Country Picklists

A feature that’s been in beta for a few releases now has finally gone generally available with state and country picklists. I’m pretty sure this has been literally years in the making (6 to be exact). You will now be able to use picklists for states and countries on the following objects: 

• Account
• Contact
• Campaign Member
• Contract
• Lead
• Person Accounts
• Quotes
• Service Contracts

You can use these picklists in most places where state and country fields are normally found such as reports, list views, record detail edit pages, as well as filters and functions. Make sure to follow the setup guide for Implementing State and Country Picklists as there are a few steps involved.

Sandbox Size Increases

Not only do we get more data in our sandbox but we also get to feel like a pro doing it. “Configuration Only” has been renamed to “Developer Pro” which actually makes a lot of sense since you could always “develop” in a Configuration Only sandbox. The big difference here is the size of the sandbox and how much data can be stored within the different versions. As always a full sandbox will include the same storage limits that you have in production but Developer has been increased from 10 MB to 200 MB and Developer Pro has been increased from 500 MB to a whopping 1 GB. That’s a really nice enhancement for all developers who need to interact with data in their development environments or test data integration scenarios. 

All in all this was a packed release, I barely scratched the surface of all the features being released which is why as mentioned above we will follow-up with more specific deep dives into the release notes by categories. I hope you enjoyed these release notes as much as I did - it’s the one just before Dreamforce so a lot of what we see in this release will be featured at the big event in November.

Please feel free to comment below, on our facebook page, or directly at me on Twitter @JustEdelstein.