The Force.com Spring '15 Release introduces compelling new enhancements and features that will automate time-based processes, enhance mobile experiences and streamline your overall development. Run more tests in Sandbox and Developer orgs, and monitor jobs for asynchronous execution.
Analytics: Introducing Wave, the Analytics Cloud
Analytics
Cloud gives you a fast, fluid way to drill through data, discover compelling
insights, and share the right visuals to tell your data story. Datasets,
lenses, dashboards, and apps are collections of data that represent different
levels of refinement—everything from raw data uploaded from your source systems
to highly curated, packaged views of your data. With the mobile-first Analytics
Cloud, you can explore all types of data from your mobile device. Check in on
this quarter’s customer cases, track progress toward sales goals, and instantly
share learnings.
With new
Salesforce analytics clouds, users can gain insight in your business through
data. Users can:
- User can
explore millions of data points from multiple sources with ease.
- Insights are
not and should not be restricted to the desktop. With the mobile-first
Analytics Cloud, you can explore all types of data from your mobile device.
Check in on this quarter’s customer cases, track progress toward sales goals,
and instantly share learnings with your team. No matter where you are,
collaborate and share insights with colleagues and know your customers like
never before.
- User can
share their findings with other teams or users.
Analytics
Cloud brings data from different business process and systems. Data can be from
Salesforce, data warehouses, CRM and ERP systems, log files, CSV files, XML
files and more. Data Sources can be provided in structured, semi-structured or
unstructured form. Salesforce uses powerful indexing technology. It provides
capacity to scale to many rows with any data type.
Apex Code Enhancements
- Submit More Batch Jobs with Apex Flex Queue: Submit up to
100 batch jobs simultaneously and actively manage the order of the queued jobs
to control which batch jobs are processed first. This enhancement provides you
more flexibility in managing your batch jobs.
- Make Long-Running Callouts from a Visualforce Page: Use
asynchronous callouts to make long-running requests from a Visualforce page to
an external Web service and process responses in callback methods. Asynchronous callouts that are made from a
Visualforce page don’t count toward the Apex limit of 10 synchronous requests
that last longer than five seconds. As a result, you can make more long-running
callouts and you can integrate your Visualforce pages with complex back-end
assets.
- Set Up Test Data for an Entire Test Class: Use test setup
methods (methods that are annotated with @testSetup) to create test records
once and then access them in every test method in the test class. Test setup
methods can be time-saving when you need to create reference or prerequisite
data for all test methods, or a common set of records that all test methods
operate on.
- Chain More Jobs with Queueable Apex: Queueable Apex was
introduced in Winter ’15 and enables you to easily start and manage
asynchronous processes. Previously, you could chain a queueable job to another
job only once. You can now chain a job to another job an unlimited number of
times. For Developer Edition and Trial organizations, your chain can have up to
five queueable jobs.
- Access Address and Geolocation Compound Fields Using Apex: You
can now access address and geolocation compound fields in Apex using the new Address
and Location classes. Previously access only compound fields’ component fields
in Apex. You can now query compound fields and their components using the new
Address and Location class methods.
- Make Apex Callouts with More Data: The callout size limit
for requests and responses has been increased to the heap size limit. With a
larger callout size for requests and responses, you can send and receive more
data from an external Web service.
- List Apex Classes and Triggers With a Tooling API Endpoint: Use
the apexManifest Tooling API endpoint to list all of your Apex classes and
triggers, including global classes and triggers from your installed managed
packages. Rather than querying both the ApexClass and ApexTrigger objects, you
can retrieve a quick list of both classes and triggers with just one API call.
Unlike ApexClass, apexManifest retrieves your inner classes—previously, you needed
to get and parse the symbol table to retrieve your inner classes.
- String Methods Fixed for Escaping Additional Characters: When
you activate this update, these Apex String methods will escape additional
characters: escapeHtml3, escapeHtml4, and escapeEcmaScript.
Salesforce 1 Enhancements
- You can turn your users into power users with Salesforce
Adoption Manager. If you enable this feature, users receive customized suggestions
based on how they work in both the full Salesforce site and the Salesforce1
mobile app. To enable Salesforce Adoption Manager, from Setup in the full
Salesforce site, click Manage Users > Adoption Manager and select Enable
Salesforce Adoption Manager.
- Salesforce introduce Create
New task that allows end users to create task directly from post in their
chatter feed.
- To take advantage of the larger screen on tablets,
Salesforce1 uses a different object home page interface than what’s provided on
smartphones. Tablet users can see more details about recently viewed records,
directly access standard and custom list views, and search across other objects
as well as the current object. The tablet version of object home pages is
currently available in the Salesforce1 mobile browser app app only.
- When using Salesforce1 on tablets, users get an enhanced
list view experience that shows more record details at a glance and includes more
sorting options and intuitive controls for navigating through this extra
information. The tablet version of list views is currently available in the
Salesforce1 mobile browser app only.
- When using Salesforce1 on smartphones, users can now see
more than four list views for an object directly from an object’s home page. It’s
no longer necessary to first open a specific list view to access other list
views. When using the mobile browser app, simply tap More List Views on an
object home page. (If a user hasn’t yet accessed any list views at all, the
option is Show List Views.) Users see up to 200 list views for the object,
including list views that haven’t been accessed recently in the full Salesforce
site.
- Now users can add a file and a link directly from the New
Post page. This feature is available in the Salesforce1 mobile browser app only.
- If Chatter Questions is enabled for your organization, you
can give moderators the ability to escalate questions in Chatter to cases,
making it easier to track and resolve your customers’ issues. Question-to-Case
is available in the Salesforce1 mobile browser app only.
- Put all your content at users’ fingertips. If Files Connect
is set up for your organization, Salesforce1 mobile browser app users can
browse and share files from external data sources, such as Microsoft SharePoint
and OneDrive for Business.
- Data.com Duplicate
Management lets you control whether and when you allow users to create duplicate
records inside Salesforce. Set up duplicate rules in the full Salesforce site
and you can also manage whether Salesforce1 users can save records that are
identified as possible duplicates. Duplicate management is now generally
available in all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app. Duplicate rules tell
Salesforce what action to take when users attempt to create records that might duplicate
existing Salesforce records. For example, the rule could block users from
saving the possible duplicate record or allow them to save it anyway.
- Records with standard address fields now display a Google
Maps image of the address. This saves user’s time by letting them see where their
contacts or accounts are located, instead of having to locate addresses in an
external map application. This feature is available in all versions of
Salesforce1.
- Sales representatives on the go can now convert qualified
leads to contacts and create opportunities (beta), which helps sales
representatives grow their revenue pipeline. This option is available in all
versions of Salesforce1.
Salesforce1 Reporting Enhancements
- Subscribe to Receive
Report Notifications: Your users can now sign up for report notifications,
to stay up-to-date on the metrics they care about most. Subscribe to a report and
set the conditions that should trigger notification.
- Increase the Session Security Level Required to Export and
Print Reports: You can now set a security policy that requires users to have a
high assurance session to export and print reports. Set this policy to restrict
access to users who can perform these tasks. Previously, you could require a
high assurance session to access resources like reports, dashboards, and
connected apps. Now, to give you finer access control, you can also require a
high assurance session to restrict access to exporting and printing reports.
- Dashboard Wizard and API Create Correct Relative URLs: The dashboard wizard and API no longer cause
errors when you enter Drill Down to locations other than absolute URLs. To fix
a potential security issue, the dashboard builder, wizard, and API now create
correct relative URLs when you use text to represent the location Salesforce
takes users to when they click a dashboard component. The text you enter is
escaped with a backslash and converted into a relative URL. All three ways of
creating dashboard components accept absolute URLs as is and don’t convert them
to relative URLs. (Absolute URLs look like salesforce.com and www.salesforce.com)
- The Reports and Dashboard Tabs Are Protected from
Clickjacking: For enhanced security, clickjack protection is now enabled for
Salesforce1 Reporting. This means that the Reports and Dashboards tabs can no
longer be embedded inside an iframe. Previously, you could turn clickjack
protection on and off. Now, clickjack protection is always active.
Lightning Process Builder
The Process Builder is a new workflow tool that helps you
easily automate your business processes by providing a powerful and
user-friendly visual representation of your process as you build it. The
Process Builder’s simple and powerful design allows you to:
- Create your processes using a
convenient visual layout with point-and-click efficiency.
- Create your whole process in one place
rather than using multiple workflow rules.
- Create processes by collaborating with
different teams in your business.
- Stop using Apex code to
automate simple tasks.
Automated
processes in the Process Builder consist of criteria that determine when to
execute action groups and immediate and scheduled actions to execute when those
criteria are met. Any change that causes a record to match the criteria can
automatically trigger the action group.
You can use
the more powerful and flexible Process Builder to perform the same actions as
workflow. The process builder doesn’t support outbound messages, but you can
easily create one yourself with Apex. With the Process Builder, you can:
- Create a record
- Update any related record—not just the
record or its parent
- Use a quick action to create a record,
update a record, or log a call
- Launch a flow—as an immediate or a
scheduled action
- Send an email
- Post to Chatter
- Submit for approval
If you need
your process to do more than what those actions allow, don’t worry. You can
also call Apex from a process.
Manager Groups
Share records up or down the management chain using sharing
rules or manual sharing or apex managed sharing. Manager groups were previously not automatically enabled in
your organization. With Spring ‘15, you can enable this feature on the Sharing
Settings page.
- Allows users share records with their management chain,
instead of all managers in the same role.
- Manager groups can be used wherever other groups are used,
such as in a manual share or sharing rule. But they cannot be added to other groups
and don’t include portal users.
- Manager groups can
contain Standard and Chatter Only users only.
Import Accounts and Contacts with Ease
My Accounts & Contacts wizard, which makes it even
easier to get accounts and contacts from the data sources that matter to you
into Salesforce. If you have a new Salesforce organization, you can get to the
wizard from the Accounts and Contacts tabs in Salesforce. Or, just click Your
Name > My Settings > Import > Import My Accounts & Contacts, and
then start the import wizard.
You can import Accounts & Contacts from 15 different
sources like Outlook, Excel, Gmail, LinkedIn, Act, Quickbook etc.
