Saturday, December 24, 2016

Warm Up with the Spring ’17 Features

 Lightning! Salesforce Einstein! Communities! Salesforce Overall!

As we all know Salesforce announces Seasonal Releases three (3) times a year. Spring ’17 release notes are now publicly available. Spring ’17 release is coming with enhancements and new exciting features!. As per Salesforce Spring ’17 release notes, most of the new features can be outdated or unavailable during release preview so make your purchase decisions only on the basis of generally available products and features.

Usually Winter release is one of the bigger releases of Salesforce because Salesforce aligns it with their mega event Dreamforce. So, if you haven't got a chance yet to read Winter ’17 release then recommendation would be to read Winter ’17 release first before deep dive into Spring ’17 release.

Currently you can’t access Lightning Experience in a mobile browser. The recommendation is to use the Salesforce1 app when you’re working on a mobile device.


Are you Ready for Lightning Experience?

Have you evaluated your Salesforce implementation to see whether you’re ready for Lightning Experience? Try to evaluate using the Lightning Experience Readiness Check.

Setup > click Lightning Experience > click Evaluate

How Do I Know If My Org Is Ready for Lightning Experience?



Also have a look at a Trailhead resource Optimize Sales Features for Lightning Experience

Bookmarks in Lightning Experience

This feature is new in Lightning Experience. With Spring '17 let you quickly access important records, lists, groups, dashboards, and other frequently used pages in Salesforce by using Favorites.

You can have up to 200 favorites. Only individual users can manage favorites. Favorites can’t be shared or edited by Salesforce admins.




Console Apps in Lightning Experience

Hooray! With Spring '17 Sales Console and Service Console are now available in Lightning Experience.






Features Not Available in Lightning Experience Console Apps

With Spring '17 Lightning Console apps don’t yet have all features of Salesforce Classic console apps. Also you can’t migrate Salesforce Classic console apps to Lightning Experience. Following features are not available in Lightning Console apps:
  • Keyboard shortcuts
  • Multi-monitor
  • Pinned lists
  • Macros
  • Live Agent
  • Javascript APIs, such as the Integration Toolkit (e.g. AJAX Toolkit Developer Guide)
  • Visualforce is available in Lightning console apps as beta.
  • Person accounts don’t have the same three-column layout as business accounts.
  • Forecasting object is not supported

Utility Bar in Lightning Console App

The utility bar gives you quickly access to recent items, history, notes etc. You can add Visualforce pages and Lightning pages. Only Visualforce pages which have "Available for Salesforce mobile apps and Lightning Pages" option enabled are supported here. 





Search By Object (e.g. Account, Contact)

With Spring '17 in Lightning Experience you can now limit your search to the object you want to search a record for.



reCAPTCHA Web Form in Web-to-Lead & Web-to-Case

With Spring '17 you can now add reCAPTCHA web form validation to filter spam leads/cases.




Opportunity Products in Lightning Experience

With Spring '17 you can now add up to 50 products to opportunities in one go and edit up to 200 simultaneously.





Lightning Voice

Lightning Voice is an out-of-the-box solution of calling a customer or prospect by dialling them directly from Sales Cloud Lightning with a simple click. Any outbound or inbound call can be automatically logged to the appropriate lead or contact record.

With Spring '17 Lightning Voice still supports outgoing calls to the U.S. and Canada only.

Please see details here about Pricing & Availability.

New Send Email Quick Action

With Spring '17 you can now send emails from anywhere in Lightning Experience. The Global or the object-specific Send Email action can be added directly to the actions section on the layout of any activity-enabled object.


Please consider current limitations before fully going to use it.












Inline Editing in List Views (Generally Available)

With Spring '17 you can now edit a record without opening it, right from the list view. And in lookup fields, you can search for and create records on the fly. This is only available in Lightning Experience.






If you are not happy with the changes you have made just click the "Refresh" icon or "Cancel" button to discard the changes.



Create Personalized Kanban View

With Spring '17 you can now make your own personalized Kanban View.

On the Kanban view > click List View Controls > select Kanban Settings.






Lightning for Gmail (Beta)

With Spring '17 Salesforce has introduced Lightning for Gmail (a Beta feature) an integration with Google applications like Gmail and Google Calendar.
  • It helps you to view relevant Salesforce records from Gmail inboxes and relate emails to Salesforce records.
  • You can sync contacts from Gmail to Salesforce, and meeting attendee details automatically sync from Google Calendar to Salesforce.
  • After you enable it:
    • You can download the Beta version of Lightning for Gmail from the Chrome web store
    • Within Gmail, you can log in to Lightning for Gmail with your Salesforce credentials.

Lightning Sync for Google (Beta)

With Spring '17 Salesforce has introduced Lightning Sync (a Beta feature) that allows you to sync Salesforce contacts to Google Contacts.

Microsoft Integration with Salesforce

With Spring '17 Salesforce has expanded the features in integration with Microsoft products.

Lightning for Outlook
  • You can now use more Salesforce content directly from Lightning for Outlook by building custom Lightning App Builder components.
  • Access more details on a Salesforce record (record’s detail page, Chatter feed, activity timeline, and related lists).
  • Salesforce Einstein
  • With Spring '17 Lightning for Outlook is now available for customers with Service Cloud or Force.com licenses.
Lightning Sync for Microsoft Exchange
  • If you use Lightning Sync with Microsoft Exchange, you can view which customers are attending their meetings directly from Salesforce.
Skype for Salesforce (Beta)
  • With Skype for Salesforce (Beta) feature you can view who’s online, chat, and initiate audio and video calls.
  • You can save important chats as notes from the Skype window.
Salesforce for Outlook

Global Actions for Contracts and Orders Objects


With Spring '17 global actions are now available for Contracts and Orders objects.

Standard Salesforce Console User Permission Set

With Spring '17 a standard permission set is now available for the Sales Console. When you purchase the Sales Console permission set license, you can immediately assign the permission set to users.

Lead Assignment Checkbox in Lightning Experience

With Spring '17 Lead Assignment Checkbox (Assign using active assignment rule) is now available in Lightning Experience.



Person Accounts in Professional Edition!

Yes you might have surprised! Yes with Spring '17 Person accounts is now available in Professional Edition.
Note: Person accounts must be enabled by Salesforce. After they’re enabled, they can’t be disabled.

Duplicate Management for Person Accounts

With Spring '17 you can now use matching rules and duplicate rules for Person accounts as well.


Person Accounts & Related Contacts

With Spring '17 you can now create indirect relationships between person accounts and contacts. Add the Related Contacts related list to the person account page layouts.

Service Console in Lightning Experience

With Spring '17 Service Console is now in Lightning Experience.




Lightning Service Setup (Beta)

With Spring '17 Salesforce has introduced Lightning Service Setup (a Beta feature) that provides easy-to-follow guided setup flows and a performance metrics dashboard. It helps you to analyse and make decision about which feature you can set up first? Facebook pages? etc.

Lightning Knowledge with Record Types

With Spring '17 Salesforce has introduced Lightning Knowledge in Lightning Experience.
You will get the benefits of standard objects that work just like other objects in Salesforce.
When you enable Lightning Knowledge, record types replace article types to distinguish different types of articles.

Lightning Knowledge Considerations

You can set up Lightning Knowledge record types and page layouts only in Salesforce Classic Setup.
Lightning Knowledge has some limitations. Please read other considerations.

Field Service Lightning iOS Mobile App (Generally Available)

With Spring '17 the Field Service Lightning iOS mobile app will be available from the Apple App Store later in Spring ’17. You need a Field Service Lightning permission set license to use the Field Service Lightning iOS mobile app.

Case Assignment Checkbox in Lightning Experience

With Spring '17 Case Assignment Checkbox (Assign using active assignment rule) is now available in Lightning Experience.

Social Customer Service in Professional Edition

With Spring '17 Social Customer Service is now supported in Professional Edition (If you have an API enabled).

Omni-Channel Supervisor Is Generally Available

With Spring '17 Omni-Channel Supervisor is now Generally Available (GA).

Omni-Channel Org Limits Has Increased

With Spring '17 the Omni-Channel org limits has increased 5,000 maximum queued work items per hour and 30,000 maximum pending routing requests.

Snap-ins Chat Generally Available

With Spring '17 the Snap-ins Chat is now Generally Available (GA).




Snap-ins for Mobile Apps

With Spring '17 Snap-ins SDK is available for iOS and Andriod.


Email-to-Case with Queues

With Spring '17 you can now assign cases to support queues when customers submit cases using Email-to-Case.


Call Center App is now Called Service

With Spring '17 Salesforce has renamed the Call Center app to Service.



Sales Cloud Einstein

With Spring '17 Sales Cloud Einstein includes key features that increase your productivity at every step of the sales process.
  • Automated Activity Capture
    • Automatically add emails and events to Salesforce with automated activity capture.
  • Lead Insights
    • Prioritize your Leads by lead score.
  • Opportunity Insights
    • Get predictions about which deals are likely to be won, reminders to follow up, and notifications.
  • Account Insights
    • It helps to stay connected and maintain relationships with your customers.

How to set up Sales Cloud Einstein?

Your Salesforce org must use a public sharing model for Leads and Contacts.
After getting Sales Cloud Einstein license, Salesforce installs two packages in your org:
  1. SalesforceIQ Cloud
  2. Sales Insights
Each package adds an associated integration user and profile.






Salesforce Community
With Spring '17 Salesforce has made a lots of changes in look and feel of communities.

Community Workspaces



More Space in Community Builder Window


Theme Layout Types


Create Asset Files from Community Builder



Control Capitalization of Titles in Your Community




Set Audience Criteria

With Spring '17 you can now add Location and Record Type criteria along with Profile to page variations.



Lightning Bolt on AppExchange
With Spring '17 you can now page types and properties in Lightning Bolt solutions. Also you can distribute Lightning Bolt solutions on the Salesforce AppExchange.
Lightning Bolt solutions will be available on AppExchange shortly after the Spring ’17 release.

Some terms has been renamed under Setup:
  • Lightning Community Templates is now Lightning Bolt Solutions
  • Lightning Community Pages is now Lightning Bolt Pages
Direct Messages in Communities
With Spring '17 you can now send direct messages to start a private conversation with one or more members.

Tasks in Communities

With Spring '17 Tasks now Available in Communities.

Access Lightning Apps in Public Communities
With Spring '17 you can now add Lightning App by adding the ltng:allowGuestAccess interface to your Lightning app to make it available to users without requiring them register with or log in to your community.

Spam IQ (Pilot)

Spam IQ steps in and monitors your customer community for spam using the community moderator’s activity as a guide. Spam IQ is a machine-learning system that protects your community all the time.

Maximum Communities in Your Salesforce Org

With Spring '17 you can now create up to 100 communities in your org.

All Updated Communities Documentation

Please have a look at updated documentation based on new look and feel.



Lightning App Builder : Assign Record Pages by App, Record Type, and Profile

With Spring '17 you can now assign record pages by app, record type, and user profile.

Lightning Pages with the Flow Component (Beta)

With Spring '17 use the new Flow component to embed active flows in your Lightning Page.

Add Skype to Lightning Record Pages (Beta)


With Spring '17 a new Skype for Business component is available for the Lightning App Builder.

Connect to Salesforce Using a Wizard, Schema, and Flow (Beta)

With Spring '17 you can connect with external service using flows.

Writable External Objects for Cross-Org Adapter

With Spring '17 you can now use Writable external objects with the cross-org adapter for Salesforce Connect.

Maximum External Objects in Org

With Spring '17 Salesforce has increased the maximum number of external objects per org from 100 to 200.

Global Picklist Fields with Record Types

With Spring '17 All global picklist fields that use the same global value set will now have individual record types.

Third-Party Frameworks in Lightning Components

With Spring '17 you can upload an app developed with a third-party framework as a static resource, and host the content in a Lightning component using lightning:container. Currently the lightning:container component is available as a developer preview.

LockerService Reminder Banner

During the Spring ’17 release a new banner in Lightning Experience will appear once a month. You can dismiss the banner, but it will reappear once a month during Spring ’17 release.

Improved Error Messages of Lightning Components

With Spring '17 you will see improved and detailed error messages of Lightning Components.


Use $Asset instead of $Resource to Reference Lightning Design System

With Spring '17 use $Asset instead of $Resource to access images, sprites, and other assets that are part of the Lightning Design System.


Rich-Text Editors & LockerService Critical Update

  • With Spring '17 Rich-Text Editors will be disabled disabled When LockerService Critical Update is Active.
  • When the LockerService critical update is active in sandboxes and Developer Edition orgs, you can’t use rich-text editors or edit fields with rich text.
  • Rich-text editors and fields in production orgs continue to function normally even when LockerService is activated.

Features Retiring

Microsoft Internet Explorer version 11
Deactivate TLS 1.0
Browsers that don’t support TLS 1.1 or TLS 1.2 won’t be able to access Salesforce after deactivate of TLS 1.0. Deactivation process has already started in sandbox orgs and concludes with production orgs on March 4, 2017.

Stay-in-Touch Requests Retires in Summer ’17

Stay-in-Touch Requests is scheduled for retirement in Summer ’17.

Cloud Scheduler is Being Retired

In Salesforce orgs created in Winter ‘17 or later, you can not use Cloud Scheduler. If you enabled Cloud Scheduler before Winter ‘17, it remains available in your org until Winter '18.

Chatter Answers Retires in Winter ’18

Chatter Answers is going to retire in Winter ’18. Salesforce will no longer support Chatter Answers, and users of Chatter Answers will no longer be able to post, answer, comment, or view any of the existing Chatter Answers data.

Salesforce Classic Mobile App to Retire in 2017

Salesforce is retiring the Salesforce Classic Mobile app on December 1, 2017. On December 1, 2017, Salesforce Classic Mobile will be removed from the App Store and Google Play, and access to currently installed Salesforce Classic Mobile apps will be immediately disabled for all users and orgs.