Salesforce Summer 15 Release Notes Rapid Reaction

This time around for Summer 15 we have the newly enhanced HTML version of the notes to enjoy. Here are a few of my favorite features that I think will be extremely impactful and I know that I’m looking forward to using and/or telling people about.

Here are some of my favorite features in the new release.

Data Loader for Mac

While there are a plethora of data loading tools out there on the market it’s nice to finally have an official data loader from Salesforce. For years us Mac users have been utilizing LexiLoader (with much success) but it always had the “unofficial” tag on it. Welcome to OS X Data Loader, we are happy you are here. Take note, if you are already using LexiLoader, Salesforce recommends that you uninstall it prior to installing the new Data Loader for Mac.

Create Custom App Pages with the Lightning App Builder

To boil this feature down to its most basic function, as an administrator you can now create your own version of the Today app on Salesforce1 Mobile. You can build pages that act as applications within the side navigation that do things like display lists of records based on criteria, display dashboard charts, show recent items, include custom Visualforce pages, or even have 3rd party components that will be made available on the AppExchange. This is a drag and drop interface to build custom mobile applications without knowing how to write a line of code, kind of reminds me of the first time I hopped into the setup page of Salesforce and realized I could build and design a fully functional web application without any coding knowledge; in the long run this is a very powerful addition to the platform.

Use New Tools to Manage Performance Summary Cycles (Pilot)

I don’t necessarily like to pick pilot features but this one looks like a potential game changer when it comes to Work.com. For the last year or so slowly but surely the Work.com application has become more and more a part of the core Salesforce platform. Performance Summaries are a big deal when it comes to collecting feedback and doing assessments around a person’s work. Summaries have been and continue to be very clunky when it comes to defining a cycle, adding questions, defining answers, and so on. In this new pilot which is only available in sandboxes Performance Cycles look and feel like standard Salesforce objects. There are tools built in for uploading spreadsheets of who to assign to a specific cycle, you can create custom fields, page layouts, and list views for all your performance summaries. I’m looking forward to the time when the entire Work.com suite is completely on platform and works like all other Salesforce objects work.

Enable Feed Post Editing in Custom Profiles

Before I get into the feature, I find it kind of odd that in the name of the feature it specifically calls out the fact that this can be enabled via a custom profile but no mention whatsoever in the notes about permission sets. Anyway, a long asked for feature is finally arriving whereby a user can be enabled to edit their own Chatter post and in addition be given the permission to edit Posts on records that they own, even if the post is made by another user. There have been countless times where I’ve made a spelling error in a post, forgot to @mention someone in a post, or generally just felt like I wanted to refine what I said in the post. My only recourse was to delete the post and start over. Now with this new permission users will be able to edit Chatter posts. I know lots of people will be happy as this Idea had over 24,000 points as of writing this blog post.

Lots of pages left out of this rapid reaction as I’ll leave it to the specialists to talk more about sales, service, and development as the weeks roll on.

Please feel free to comment below, on the Salesforce Success Community, on our Facebook page, or directly at me on Twitter @JustEdelstein.