Salesforce provides three releases per year Spring, Summer, Winter. They are provided at no extra cost and they happen automatically in the background, so no need to worry about upgrading the system manually.
In the blog that follows we will explore the most exciting new features that Salesforce has provided with their latest Spring 16’ Release.
Salesforce is always innovating but more than that, they like to listen to their users. One neat feature they have and that has been around for a few years is the IdeaExchange community. There you can post feedback, suggest new features or vote for your favorite ideas. So if you have any that you would like to put forward or see what’s in the pipeline then head over there now!
With every release salesforce has been fine tuning the lighting experience UI and adding new functionality. So most of the new features we will be discussing will involve using the new lighting experience. For those of you that are not familiar with what lightning is head over to Trailhead for free training modules.
Global Actions
Global actions provide a shortcut menu which is always on the header of any page. It covers the big four: New event, New Task, Log a Call and New Note.
Once you’ve made your selection a new window opens on the current page. That means no more opening several browser tabs to create multiple notes or activities at the same time, or searching for the right record to complete a simple task.
You can open multiple windows at once that are docked along the bottom of the page and when the screen doesn’t have room to display all the open windows, they stack up in an overflow menu.
Here is a quick video to show this feature in action.
Campaigns
Before this release lighting Experience didn’t support campaigns but that has all changed.
With the new campaign functionality, you can quickly update the status of hundreds of campaign members using the import wizard. See campaign participation for past and present on leads & contacts with meaningful, easy-to-understand charts. Lastly you can see the campaign’s effect on opportunities right in the pipeline view.
Reports & Dashboards
Reports are always at the center of most orgs and they are a big factor when adopting a CRM like salesforce. Being able to report on the data is just as important as the data itself.
Salesforce have made some big steps on the reports & dashboard department with lighting experience in their last few releases. With Spring 16’ they are now on partly with those in salesforce classic. With a whole lot of new features that allow you to analise your data easier and experience a flashier user interface there’s never been a better time to experience reports & dashboards in lighting.
Some of the highlights in Spring 16’ are:
- User dashboard filters to see only the data you need
- View tables on dashboards as other users to get more insights
- Show or hide details on matrix reports to summarise data along multiple axes
- Change the colour of your charts and set reference lines to add a personal touch and highlight specific values
- Find, edit, and organize your reports, dashboards, and folders easily with redesigned report and dashboard home pages
Security
Salesforce introduced a new security feature called ‘Health Check’ that allows you identify any security gaps or risks that exist in your system and all from a single page. ‘Health Check’ lets you understand and proactively remediate security risks and vulnerabilities at a glance. The simple to understand dashboard shows high and medium risk settings and how they compare against the standard.
Conclusion
As we already mentioned before, Salesforce is able to provide customers seamless, automatic upgrades each release, delivered in real-time, and with no downtime. That means not worrying about updating hardware or software letting you focus on learning and exploring the new features.
We have talked about some of the new exiting features in the Spring 16’ but just like every release there are tons of new features and tweaks that are designed to improve your salesforce experience. For a full document on all the updates and new features see the Spring 16’ Release Notes here.
