Sunday, May 20, 2018

Quick Highlights of the Summer ’18 Features

Discover, Adopt, and Personalize | Modern and Intelligent User Experience
As we all know Salesforce announces Seasonal Releases three (3) times a year. Summer ’18 release notes are now publicly available. Summer ’18 release is coming with enhancements and new exciting features!.

Encourage Users to Adopt Lightning Experience

With Summer '18 release, Users who have access to Lightning Experience are automatically switched from Salesforce Classic to Lightning Experience on a weekly basis.


New URL for Lightning Experience & Salesforce Mobile App

Salesforce Summer '18 release is coming with new URL format for Lightning Experience & Salesforce Mobile App.


Search the Object Easily & Faster

With Summer '18 release, you can now search to any searchable object simply by choosing or typing the object name in the dropdown.


Einstein Bots in Action!

With Summer '18 release, Einstein Bot is generally available to orgs with Service Cloud and Live Agent user licenses.


Perform Mass Quick Actions in Lightning Experience

With Summer '18 release, you can now use a mass quick action with cases, leads, accounts, campaigns, contacts, opportunities, work orders, and custom objects in Lightning Experience.

Communities: Lightning Community Template "Customer Service (Napili)" has a new Name

With Summer '18 release, Customer Service (Napili) is now called Customer Service.

Communities: Optimize Customer Community Site with Progressive Rendering

With Summer '18 release, You can specify in which order components are displayed when the page loads to optimize your site’s speed.

Communities: Lightning Bolt has a new Name

With Summer '18 release, Lightning Bolt is now renamed Lightning Bolt Solutions.

Communities: Community Users login with Passwordless login

With Summer '18 release, Community users can now login into your community with a verification code instead of a password.

 Please read the details here. 

 Related useful resources

 Implement Passwordless Login and Verification Methods with Apex

Give Users Flexibility When Entering Phone Numbers

Enable Users to Review and Manage Their Verification Methods

Communities: Expire Community Links in Welcome Emails

With Summer '18 release, you can now set number of days to expire the links in Community Welcome emails.

Communities: Make Sure That Your Head Markup Is Valid

Starting with Summer ‘19 all existing code must be compliant for the <head> to function, and all new code must be compliant to be saved.

Communities: Sharing Sets for all Customer and Partner Licenses (Beta)

With Summer '18 release, You can now use sharing sets with the Customer Community Plus and Partner Community licenses (role-based community licenses). Previously, sharing sets were limited to Customer Community users ONLY.

Time Field Type (Generally Available)

With Summer '18 release, the Time field type is now generally available.

Retrieve Custom Setting List Views Using the Metadata API

With Summer '18 release, you can now retrieve custom setting list views using the Metadata API.

Rename Your My Domain

With Summer '18 release, you can now rename My Domain subdomain without contacting Salesforce Customer Support.

New Debug Mode for Lightning Components

With Summer '18 release, when debugging Lightning component JavaScript code, you can now enable debug mode only for the users who are actively debugging.

Lightning Component Library Is Generally Available

The Component Library is available at developer.salesforce.com/docs/component-library.

 The Component Library is also available as an authenticated experience at 
https://<myDomain>.lightning.force.com/componentReference/suite.app

 Where <myDomain> is the name of your custom Salesforce domain.

Lightning Experience Stylesheets to Visualforce Pages (Generally Available)

With Summer '18 release, the Lightning Experience Stylesheets feature is now generally available.

 <apex:page lightningStylesheets="true" applyHtmlTag="false" applyBodyTag="false">

 </apex:page>

The <body> tag has now Visualforce Scope in Lightning Experience

With Summer '18 release, the Visualforce page <body> element now includes the CSS scoping class slds-vf-scope when lightningStylesheets="true" in the <apex:page> tag.

 <apex:page lightningStylesheets="true" applyHtmlTag="false" applyBodyTag="false">

 <body class="slds-vf-scope">

     <!-- Your Lightning-styled Visualforce content -->

 </body>

 </apex:page>

Switch statement in Apex code!

With Summer '18 release, Apex now provides a switch statement :).

Get the DeveloperName for Record Types in Schema Describe

With Summer '18 release, Apex now has methods to help you get the developer name for record types more easily.

The SOQL Count() Function counts as only one query row toward the limit

With Summer '18 release, The SOQL count() function now counts as only one query row toward the limit.

Opt Out of Collecting Code Coverage Information During Test Runs

With Summer '18 release, you can quickly get the feedback on pass or fail status of test class rather than collecting coverage data.

The new @namespaceAccessible annotation for Packaging

With Summer '18 release, the new @namespaceAccessible annotation marks public or protected Apex as available to other packages that share a namespace.

Apex Code Size Limit Increased

With Summer '18 release, the maximum amount of Apex code in an org has been increased from 3 MB to 6 MB.

Metadata Coverage Report

Summer '18 is coming with Metadata Coverage report to analyse your org's metadata coverage information.

Referencing Custom Metadata Type Records in Validation Rules (Generally Available)

With Summer '18 release, you can now reference records of custom metadata typpe in Validation rules.

Chatter Desktop Is Being Retired in Summer ’18

Chatter Desktop is retiring in June 2018.

Files Connect for SharePoint On-Premises Is Being Retired

Files Connect for SharePoint On-Premises is scheduled for retirement in all Salesforce orgs as of May 18, 2018.

Files Sync Is Being Retired

Salesforce Files Sync is scheduled for retirement in all Salesforce orgs on May 25th, 2018.




Summer '18 release has lots of other exciting and interesting features but these are just few of them. Please read the Summer '18 release notes for details.



Useful Resources

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Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Quick Highlights of the Spring ’18 Features

Lightning Platform | Artificial Intelligence (AI) | Data Protection and Privacy Regulations

As we all know Salesforce announces Seasonal Releases three (3) times a year. Spring ’18 release notes are now publicly available. Spring ’18 release is coming with enhancements and new exciting features!. As per Salesforce Spring ’18 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 ’18 release then recommendation would be to read Winter ’18 release first before deep dive into Spring ’18 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.

Accessing Lightning Experience Using IE 11

With Spring '18, the support of Lightning Experience using Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 11 has extended through December 31, 2020.

Customize Themes and Branding in Lightning Experience

With Spring '18, you can now choose one of Salesforce’s built-in themes or create your own custom themes.

New URL Format for Lightning Experience and the Salesforce Mobile App

With Spring '18, Salesforce has changed the URL format used by Lightning Experience standard apps and the Salesforce mobile app.
  • Current format: https://<lightning.domain.com>/one/one.app/#/sObject/Account/home
  • New format: https://<lightning.domain.com>/lightning/o/Account/home

Guidance for Data Protection and Privacy Regulations

With Spring '18, Salesforce gives you guidance to help you evaluate the best way to meet your requirements regarding data protection and privacy regulations. Please also read how to store certain data privacy preferences (e.g. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) etc.).

UK and Ireland Contact Data Removed from Data.com Connect

With Spring '18, as Salesforce data protection and privacy regulations, such as the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), Salesforce has removed data for contacts in the UK and Ireland from the Data.com Connect contact database.

Removed PII from Web-to-Case and Web-to-Lead Emails

With Spring '18, as Salesforce data protection and privacy regulations, such as the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), Salesforce Emails will no longer include personal identifying information (PII) when Web-to-Case or Web-to-Lead fails.

External Community and Chatter Users

With Spring '18, External Community and Chatter users will now be able to deactivate their own accounts. Please read more here.

Salesforce Surveys (Generally Available)

With Spring '18, Salesforce Surveys are now Generally Available. You can embed surveys into Lightning pages and communities.
  1. For Lightning pages, use the Lightning App Builder to add the Survey standard Lightning component to your pages.
  2. For communities, use the Community Builder to add the Survey component.

WebEx Meetings in Salesforce Events

With Spring '18, you can now add WebEx meeting from the Event record page.

Override Standard Actions Separately for Different Experiences

With Spring '18, you can now override standard actions (e.g. View, New, Edit etc.) separately for different experiences (e.g. Salesforce Classic, Lightning Experience, Mobile).


Manage List Custom Settings Type

As Salesforce strongly recommends using custom metadata types instead over list type custom settings, with Spring '18 by default you will not be able to create List type Custom Settings. If you really want to use List type Custom Settings then you can enable List Custom Settings on the Schema Settings page in Setup.

Reference Custom Metadata Type Records in Validation Rules (Pilot)

With Spring '18, you can now add reference of Custom Metadata Type Records in Validation Rules. This feature is in Pilot release.



Force.com will Now be called Lightning Platform

With Spring '18, Salesforce has decided to change the name of "Force.com" to "Lightning Platform".

Deactivate Orgs

With Spring '18, you can now deactivate an org.
  • 30 days to change your mind and reactivate it.
  • After 30 days, the org is locked, and you must contact Salesforce Customer Support to reactivate it.
  • After 60 days, the org is permanently deleted from Salesforce servers.

Apex: Require Two-Factor Authentication Using Apex Triggers

With Spring '18, you can now add user identity verification in Apex trigger to help protect sensitive operations from outside integrations (e.g. API integrations etc.).

Visualforce: Removing Instance Names from URLs

With Spring '18, Salesforce is removing instance name from URL for Visualforce, Community Builder, Site.com Studio, and Content Files.
  • mydomain--c.visualforce.com replaces mydomain--c.na1.visual.force.com
  • mydomain--c.documentforce.com replaces mydomain--c.na1.content.force.com
  • All *.content.force.com URLs will be replaced with *.documentforce.com.

This change will be activated automatically on March 16, 2019.

Lightning: Lightning Component for Carousel!

With Spring '18, Salesforce has introduced a new Lightning component (lightning:carousel) for Carousel! Now you don't need to write custom code in JavaScript to build Carousel! Please read about other new and changed Lightning Components.

Lightning: Lightning Component for Record Edit!

With Spring '18, Salesforce has introduced a new Lightning component (lightning:recordEditForm) for editing record! Please read about other new and changed Lightning Components.


Spring '18 release has lots of other exciting and interesting features but these are just few of them. Please read the Spring '18 release notes for details.

Useful Resources
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Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Salesforce Certified Mobile Solutions Architecture Designer





In the month of November 2017, I got a chance to appear in the Salesforce Certified Mobile Solutions Architecture Designer exam.

About the exam

  • Prerequisite: None
  • Multiple-choice/multiple-select questions = 60
  • Passing Score = 68%
  • Time allotted to complete the exam = 120 minutes
  • Minimum correct answers = 60 * 68 / 100 = 40.8 (at least 41)
Note: Please note that there might be 5 unscored questions in addition to the 60 scored questions. The additional 5 unscored questions are for the Salesforce university in order to gather data on questions performance (fail/pass rate).

Preparation

Suggestions & Tips

  • Take any of the new Architect Journey exam as more to get the knowledge than the certification credentials!
  • In order to pass this exam or any of the new Architect Journey exam, you must have read the Architect resource guide thoroughly and as well as hands on experience.
  • If you don't have any practical experience, a Salesforce Developer edition will be the best option where you will have pretty much everything you need to have for this exam.
  • Salesforce Trailhead is a great source, containing full of information for each area of the Salesforce platform.
  • I learnt one thing in the new Architect Journey exams Don’t judge exam questions by its length! In any of the new Architect Journey exam you will find few questions very easy straightforward but those questions are very less in numbers. You will find majority of questions complex but interesting and every question will have a clue or point to select the correct answer(s).

I hope the content here helps you to get this Certification. Best of luck!
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Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Quick Highlights of the Winter ’18 Features

Innovation | Artificial intelligence (AI) | Salesforce Einstein | Lightning


 As we all know Salesforce announce Seasonal Releases three times a year. Each release comes up with large number of new and enhanced features. Salesforce Winter '18 features are now publicly available. As per Salesforce Winter '18 Release documentation most of the new features can be outdated or unavailable during release preview.

New Look and Feel in Lightning Experience

With Winter '18 release, Salesforce has improved readability, information density, and color contrast in Lightning Experience. These refinements are now built-in. In a future release, user will be able to define a custom theme.


Themes and Branding


What’s Not Available in Winter ’18 Lightning Experience?

Please review each feature here to analyse functionalities which are currently not available in Lightning Experience.

New Keyboard Shortcuts in Lightning Experience

Winter '18 release has come with new keyboard shortcuts in Lightning Experience.

Initiate the process to Enable Person Accounts from Setup

With Winter '18 release, you can now initiate the automated process checks whether or not your org meets the requirements for using Person Accounts.


Automatically Open Related Records in Lightning Console Apps

With Winter '18 release, you can now configure the navigation rules in Lightning Service Console to open related records when you open an object record (e.g. Account, Contact or Case etc.).

View Hierarchies for Assets

With Winter '18 release, you can now have tree grid view of asset hierarchies.

External Routing Implementation with Omni-Channel (Beta)

With Winter '18 release, you can now connect Salesforce with an external routing implementation in your routing configuration.

View the Related List by Hovering over a Link

With Winter '18 release, you can view the complete related lists just by hovering over a link.

Encrypt More PII Fields (Generally Available)

With Winter '18 release, you can now encrypt more fields on Leads, Accounts (including Person Accounts) and Contacts.

Wave Analytics is now Einstein Analytics.

Starting in Summer ’17 and continuing in Winter ’18 release Wave Analytics is now Einstein Analytics.

Connect with more Web-based Data Services

With Winter '18 release, in Einstein Analytics you can now even connect with more web-based data services.

Field Service Lightning for Android (Generally Available)

With Winter 18 release, Field Service Lightning app is now generally available for Android.

HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security)

With Winter '18 release, you can now set configuration to enable HSTS on communities and Force.com site. It is by default enabled on all Visualforce pages and can’t be disabled.

Verify Access to External Data Source

With Winter '18 release, you can now use Salesforce Connect Validator AppExchange app to quickly verify the connection and external objects data before using it.

Set the API Version of Lightning Components Bundle

With Winter '18 release, you can now set the API version of Lightning Components in Developer Console.

New Lightning Component Library (Beta)

With Winter '18 release, Salesforce has come up with the new component library.

https://<myDomain>.lightning.force.com/componentReference/suite.app
You can also continue to use https://<myDomain>.lightning.force.com/auradocs/reference.app in your org.

Custom Page Template in the Lightning App Builder

With Winter '18 release, you can now create a custom Lightning page template component and make it available as a custom page template in the Lightning App Builder’s new page wizard.

Clone the Existing Lightning Pages

With Winter '18 release, you can now create new Lightning pages by cloning an existing Lightning pages.

Click-to-Dial component in Lightning

With Winter '18 release, you can use the Lightning component lightning:clickToDial in Lightning pages and apps. This is similar to what we have support:clickToDial in Visualforce.

Community Activity with Community 360 (Generally Available)

With Winter '18 release, you can get the valuable insight into customer activity with Community 360 which is now generally available. The Lightning App Builder component that you can add to your console to see a customer’s community activity.

Visual Workflow / Flows in Lightning Community Pages

With Winter '18 release, you can now add Flow component in Lightning Community Builder pages.

Koa and Kokua Templates No Longer Available for New Communities

Starting in Summer ’17 and continuing in Winter ’18 release, Koa and Kokua templates are no longer available for new communities.

Access External Objects using Database.QueryLocator in Batch Apex

With Winter '18 release, you can now use Database.QueryLocator to access external objects from batch Apex.

New @isTest(isParallel=true) annotation in Test Classes

With Winter '18 release, you can now use @isTest(isParallel=true) annotation with test classes to tun in parallel. This annotation overrides the default settings that disable parallel testing.

Deployments Now Recompile of All Apex Code

With Winter '18 release, Now all of an org’s Apex code will be recompiled automatically before completing a metadata deploy, change set, a package install, or a package upgrade (including push upgrades).

Salesforce DX

Salesforce Developer Experience (Salesforce DX) will be generally available in mid-October 2017.

Control Access to Apex REST Services (no longer needed API Enabled permission)

With Winter '18 release, Apex REST Services to create permission sets for users that need to access Apex REST services but not access APIs, like the SOAP API.

Note: Contact Salesforce to enable this permission in your org.

User Interface API (Generally Available)

With Winter '18 release, you can now use Salesforce UI API for native mobile apps and custom web apps to build your own custom apps which users love! This is the same API that Salesforce uses to build Salesforce1 and Lightning Experience.

Second-Generation Packaging (Beta)

With Winter '18 release, Salesforce has come up with new way of develop, distribute and manage agile app development.


Useful Resources

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Saturday, August 12, 2017

Salesforce Certified Community Cloud Consultant



In the month of August 2017, I got a chance to appear in the Salesforce Certified Community Cloud Consultant exam.

About the exam

  • Prerequisite: Salesforce Certified Administrator credential
  • Multiple-choice/multiple-select questions = 60
  • Passing Score = 57%
  • Time allotted to complete the exam = 90 minutes
  • Minimum correct answers = 60 * 57 / 100 = 34.2 (at least 34)
Note: Please note that there might be 2 to 5 unscored questions in addition to the 60 scored questions. The additional 2 to 5 unscored questions are for the Salesforce university in order to gather data on questions performance (fail/pass rate).

Preparation

  • Salesforce Certified Community Cloud Consultant
    • Read all the questions in the study guide. Few questions might come in your exam!
  • Communities Architecture Resource Guide
    • Read all the topics in the architect resource guide because this is the master guide to Pass the exam. Please do read every topic from this guide.
    • Make sure you do practice at least one (1) time in Salesforce Developer edition.
  • Trailhead modules
  • Salesforce Communities Overview
  • Salesforce Communities Overview
  • Communities User Licenses
  • How to pick the community license?
  • Create Communities Users = Accounts > Contacts > Users
  • “Portal Super User” permission
  • Partner Portal Role Hierarchy
  • Review and practice each option under Community Settings in Setup
  • Sharing Set in Communities Setting
  • Share Groups in Communities Setting
  • Enable Community Workspaces
    • Create Community
      • What are the Statuses of Community (e.g. Preview, Active etc.)?
    • Reivew and practice each option in Community Workspaces
    • Administration
      • Emails
      • Login and Registration
      • Community Self-Registration
      • Authentication Provider
      • Social Sign-On Provisioning
      • Guest User Profile (Force.com Site)
      • How to use Unauthenticated Pages in Force.com Sites & Communities?
      • Members
    • Lightning Community Builder
      • You must know about each and every component of Lightning Community Builder
      • Lightning Community Builder Pages UI difference based on Profile
      • Which type of components you can have in Lightning Community Builder?
      • What are the available options in Branding?
      • What are the available options in Lightning Community Builder Settings?
    • Lightning Community Templates 
    • Lightning Bolt Solutions (Partner Central)
  • How to access Communities via Salesforce 1 and Mobile Browser?
  • Files Connect Settings

Useful Resources

Suggestions & Tips

  • Take any of the new Architect Journey exam as more to get the knowledge than the certification credentials!
  • In order to pass this exam or any of the new Architect Journey exam, you must have read the Architect resource guide thoroughly and as well as hands on experience.
  • If you don't have any practical experience, a Salesforce Developer edition will be the best option where you will have pretty much everything you need to have for this exam.
  • Salesforce Trailhead is a great source, containing full of information for each area of the Salesforce platform.
  • I learnt one thing in the new Architect Journey exams Don’t judge exam questions by its length! In any of the new Architect Journey exam you will find few questions very easy straightforward but those questions are very less in numbers. You will find majority of questions complex but interesting and every question will have a clue or point to select the correct answer(s).

I hope the content here helps you to get this Certification. Best of luck!
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