Ideas Delivered in Spring 16

Once again, the Salesforce Community provided numerous suggestions via the IdeaExchange and the Salesforce Product Teams delivered. There are some strong enhancements driven by your suggestions in this release, way to go!

Spring ‘16 includes 19 IdeaExchange submissions across every aspect of the platform, and this post will identify some of the key enhancements.

Lightning Experience

• Need warning when user is about to navigate away from page without saving change (14,480 points) - Inline editing is a huge productivity enabler as long as the edits are saved. This enhancement provides a warning dialog if the user navigates away or refreshes the browser prior to saving, allowing the user to confirm their action. Per Product Management, this feature may even become optional in the future to allow for tighter control over the user experience.
• Formula fields should show on new/edit page (3,410 points) - This idea was merged with 5 others, but the key is that formula fields with hyperlinks and images are now supported in Lightning Experience. 

Chatter

• Ability to Edit a Chatter Post After Posting (24,520) - Merged with 29 other ideas, this enhancement was partially delivered in Summer ‘15 but there was an issue if the post contained links or attachments. The issue has been addressed and  users now have the ability to edit Chatter posts even if they contain a link or attachments.

Reports and Dashboards

• Administrator Access to Personal Report Folders (19,640 points) - Administrators can now find (and delete) reports and dashboards saved in all users’ private folders via SOQL queries. Dust off your Workbench skills and go clean up your org, your wishes are granted.
• Delete Reports and Dashboards Belonging to Inactive Users (1,380 points) - Administrators now have the ability to identify (and delete) reports contained in inactive user’s personal folders via Workbench. The process requires some manipulation of query export files and while is not exactly “click” enabled, it does enable you to clean out those obsolete reports and dashboards created by inactive users.

Customization

• Chatter Publisher Action Should Have Option to Not Post to Feed (2,220 points) - You now have the ability to select whether or not a Quick Action creates a Feed Item on execution. Your users will be overjoyed to see the reduced clutter in their feeds.

Knowledge

• Enable validation rules on Knowledge articles (3,010 points) - This can help you maintain data integrity by allowing you to create validation rules for each article type to check whether required fields have the appropriate values based on the article’s status.
• Allow full page layout functionality on Knowledge Articles (1,600 points) - You now have the ability to create a layout for each profile, the concept being that you can display different fields for the same article type to different users based on their profile.

Each Salesforce release just keeps getting better with suggestions such as these. Do you have some favorites that we didn’t mention? Please feel free to comment below, on the Salesforce Success Community, on our Facebook page, or directly at me on Twitter @sfdcclicks.