Here are a few highlights of the upcoming Salesforce Winter ’16 release (Release Notes (PDF) are 399 pages!!). Grab a cup of coffee, tea, hot cocoa or whatever floats your boat and read these summary notes. Enjoy!
Lightning Experience
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve heard or know about Lightning Experience. Salesforce’s desktop UI gets a much needed makeover.
Lightning Experience is the new, slick user interface for the desktop browser UI. The initial release of the new user interface is geared towards sales reps with an intuitive interface that allows sales reps to work more efficiently within a given object record. The dashboard and charts in Lightning Experience behave much like Wave where changes in the chart recalculates before your eyes. While the new interface is easy to enable, this new user interface may not be for everyone, especially if identified gaps are important features for your users.
There is too much about Lightning Experience to summarize here so I recommend you watched the recorded unveiling, read through the complete Winter ’16 Release Notes or go to Trailhead to determine whether this new feature is for your users.
Watch the recorded unveiling of the new Salesforce UI: http://sforce.co/1EiGKFz
Release Notes: http://sforce.co/1LEbC2I
Trailhead:
Admin Trail – Starting with Lightning Experience (http://sforce.co/1LCBEpZ)
Admin Trail: Migrating to Lightning Experience (http://sforce.co/1LvJm2q)
Sales Rep Trail – Using Lightning Experience (http://sforce.co/1hgUZQa)
Developer Trail – Lightning Experience (http://sforce.co/1EU9Gyo)
Sales Cloud Enhancements
| Item | Salesforce Classic | Lightning Experience |
| (Generally available) Microsoft® Outlook® Web App (OWA), Outlook 2013, or Outlook 2016 along with Microsoft Office 365™. Salesforce App for Outlook | Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions | Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions |
| Item | Salesforce Classic | Lightning Experience |
| Quicker Notification of Duplicate Records | N/A | Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions |
For those using duplicate management, with Winter ’16, as the users are completing fields on the record, the user will be notified that a record already exists in Salesforce, not after they’ve completed all the information and saved the record.
| Item | Salesforce Classic | Lightning Experience |
| Link Custom Lookup Fields from Activities to Other Records | Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions | Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions |
Rather than having to select only one type of record most important to your tasks or events, you can add custom lookups fields.
The custom lookup creates a related list for the record type. This custom lookup’s record related list combines both open and closed tasks.
| Item | Salesforce Classic | Lightning Experience |
| The Salesforce console is now the Lightning Console | Performance and Developer Editions for an extra cost | N/A |
See Service Cloud enhancements for details.
Service Cloud Enhancements
| Item | Salesforce Classic | Lightning Experience |
| The Salesforce console is now the Lightning Console | Performance and Developer Editions for an extra cost | N/A |
The Salesforce console also undergoes a UI makeup to align with Lightning Experience. However, this is currently only available in Salesforce Classic, available via the App Menu. This new UI will be automatically turned on for everyone with the Salesforce console.
- Simpler lists with responsive columns and buttons to see more details without scroll bars.
- Custom colors for branding headers and footers, and new color options for primary tabs.
- Slicker sidebars to display custom console components better.
- Extra space to improve searching and reading experiences.
- Cleaner header to get right to search, apps, and settings.
- More modern fonts and icons with a consistent look.
- Neater case feed for easier scanning.
| Item | Salesforce Classic | Lightning Experience |
| Cool interactive dashboard editor available in Lightning Experience | N/A | Available in: Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions |
For those who will use Lightning Experience, you are no longer restricted to the 3 column look. You can drag and drop, resize dashboard components within a grid design to create really slick dashboards.
Salesforce Classic dashboard design:
New Lightning Experience dashboard design:
Mobile Enhancements
Use Mobile Device or Mobile Device Emulators to test Salesforce1.
Prior to the Winter ’16 release, you would append “/one/one.app” to your Salesforce URL to simulate Salesforce1 testing in the desktop browser. Beginning with Winter ’16, this URL is reserved for Lightning Experience. To test out the Salesforce1 experience, you will need to test the changes either on actual mobile devices or mobile device emulators.
Download and install the appropriate SDK for your supported devices.
- Apple iOS Simulator for iPhone and iPad: developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/IDEs/ Conceptual/iOS_Simulator_Guide/
- Android Virtual Device Emulator for Phone and Tablet: developer.android.com/tools/devices/emulator.html
UPDATED Additionally, you can emulate mobile devices in Chrome and in Safari: http://salesforce.vidyard.com/watch/CZvCWa2tG9TmradIkVyJgw
Scroll to See More Data
How annoying was it to have to scroll down to the bottom of the page in Salesforce1 to load more, especially on lists that go on and on and on?! With Winter 16, users can keep on scrolling down to view the data.
Quicker Notification of Duplicate Records
For those using duplicate management, with Winter ’16, as the users are completing fields on the record, the user will be notified that a record already exists in Salesforce, not after they’ve completed all the information and saved the record. This setting is now the new default behavior.
Encrypted Data is now Accessible in Salesforce1
Previous to Winter ’16, encrypted data was not viewable in Salesforce1 as it is in the browser. Now, encrypted data will be viewable to users with the Encrypted Data permission. Encrypted data is also searchable within Salesforce1.
Lightning Connect Enhancements
Lightning Connect external data sources are available in: Developer Edition and for an extra cost in: Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions.
External Data is now writeable!
Users have the ability to create, update and delete external object records without leaving the Salesforce UI when an OData or Apex custom adapter is used to connect Salesforce with the external data source. Prior to Winter ’16, external object records were read only.
Process Builder Enhancements
Schedule Multiple Groups of Actions
Each Action Group in Process Builder can now have multiple scheduled actions with Winter 16. Previously, you were limited to one scheduled action.
Improved UI when updating records
When you choose to update a record, you can simply select to update the same record that initiated your process or child records.
Process Builder is BULKIFIED!
Prior to Winter 16, process builder was limited to 200 SOQL queries per transaction. Beginning with Winter 16, process builder buckets as many of the queries together as it can without reaching the SOQL query limit.
Visual Workflow Enhancements
Visual Workflow is BULKIFIED!
Prior to Winter 16, process builder was limited to 200 SOQL queries per transaction. With Winter 16, Salesforce has bulkified elements that look up records. Flows can now handle more than one operation at a time (record lookup, record update, record delete and fast lookup).
Replicate a Picklist Field in a Flow Screen
No more manually updating a flow every time there is an update to a picklist! You can now generate a set of choices that correspond to a specific picklist or multi-select picklist in Salesforce.
Debug Flows with Better Fault Emails
The Flow Fault emails have been further improved in Winter ’16 by providing additional information about what happened in each element.
Chatter Enhancements
Your Chatter Feed Contains More Relevant Information
Prior to Winter ’16, you would see postings other people have made to a person’s profile that you are following. With the updated feature in Winter ’16, Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience users will only see updates in your Chatter feed from people you follow. The new follow feature will be automatically enabled in all new orgs. Existing orgs need to contact Salesforce to enable this new feature.
Mute Posts
Have posts that you were once interested in and are now over it and wish updates would stop hitting your Chatter news feed? With Winter ’16, Salesforce Classic users can now mute posts you’re no longer interested in. It’s simple, select “Mute” from the post’s dropdown menu. This will mute the posts from your Home and Chatter tabs (but not on group, profile or record feeds). You can also mute posts by replying “mute” to post emails. Note: This feature will be enabled by default in new and existing Salesforce orgs.
General Enhancements
Set Audit Fields and Update Records with Inactive Owners
For data migration purposes, you may have needed the ability to set the audit fields to the original created or modified dates and created by/modified by user. Or, you may have migrated data records that need to be associated with inactive users. This required opening a case with Salesforce support to open these up use.
To take advantage of this feature, enable it for the organization, by going to User Interface under setup and selecting “Enable Set Audit Fields upon Record Creation and Update Records with Inactive Owners.”
Then, you can enable one or both permissions via a permission set or user profile.
Note: You can set audit fields only in API-enabled editions of Salesforce.
Deployment Enhancements
During deployment, prior to Winter ’16, all tests are run in a production deployment. Tests are not run by default in sandbox deployments. Beginning with Winter ’16, you can select to either run all, local or selected tests when validating and deploying inbound change sets in production or a sandbox.
Run Local Tests: Runs all tests in the organization except those from installed managed packages. This test level is the default for production deployments that include Apex classes or triggers.
Run All Tests: All tests in your organization are run, including tests of managed packages.
Run Specified Tests: You specify the tests to run by providing the names of test classes in a comma-separated list.
Development Enhancements
Reorder Your Batch Jobs in the Flex Queue Programmatically
Prior to Winter ’16, you can manually reorder jobs for execution in the flex queue via the Salesforce UI. Starting with Winter ’16, using the apex methods in the new System.FlexQueue class will enable you to automate the prioritization of batch jobs in the Apex flex queue.
Set Notification Recipients of Unhandled Apex Faulted Emails
By default, the developer who has modified the failing class or trigger is notified when there is an apex issue. This can be an issue if the developer is no longer active in your organization or you have a support team who should be notified of production support issues. With Winter ’16, you can now set up additional email recipients – either other users in your Salesforce organization or an external email address.
Manage Custom Metadata Types and Records Declaratively
Previously, only available via metadata API, with Winter ’16, you can create custom metadata types and records declaratively in the Salesforce Setup UI. You also have the ability to specify whether a custom meta data type is public or protected. A protected custom metadata record would only be accessible by your code, code from unmanaged packages, and code from the managed package that defines its type. As a developer of a custom metadata type, you can choose who can change values (locked after release, subscriber editable, upgradeable) after it has been deployed to a subscriber organization. Custom metadata changes are tracked in the set up audit trail.
For the complete Winter ’16 Release notes, visit http://docs.releasenotes.salesforce.com/en-us/winter16/release-notes/salesforce_release_notes.htm
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