Even though we're just getting into the thick of things winter-weather-wise here in New York, Salesforce rolled out its Spring '16 release this month.
While there were a ton of new exciting developments made to Lightning Experience in this release, if you're like us -- not quite ready to roll it out -- you may be wondering, "what's in this release for me?"
Here are some neat things sure to make admins everywhere pretty happy!
Chatter Things
Broadcast Chatter Groups
Salesforce has introduced a new type of Chatter group called "Broadcast Only," which means that only the group owner or group managers can post messages to it.
This is great way to create a place for staff-wide announcements, while preventing others from posting to the group with off-topic messages. The rest of your staff will still be able to comment on the posts in a Broadcast group.
(Groups that are not meant for the whole staff--private or unlisted groups, which are "invite only"-- can also get the Broadcast Only treatment.)
"dear staff, there are valentine's day cookies in the kitchen!"
More relevant @mention suggestions
You might have already noticed this change, before you realized it was an official improvement -- we definitely did. This makes it much easier to address your posts to the right person. When you start typing @ + someone's name, instead of seeing an alphabetical list of users (including external Chatter users or Community users that you're probably not talking to most of the time), the list starts with the people you interact with the most!
Process Builder Improvements (for Intermediate/Advanced Users)
We loooooove Process Builder. Now there's a little bit more to love!
Reuse names and descriptions when creating a new version of a Process
Previously, when you cloned an existing Process to create a new version of it, you had to retype the name and description of it. Now it's smartly copied over for you and the copy is automatically assigned a version number when you save it.
"Emailing_The_Volunteer_Actual_Final_Version_Not_Broken_I_Hope"
View the names of your fields by hovering over them
It used to be virtually impossible to see the field names that were already selected in a Process Builder step. Now you can hover over the field selection box to see the whole name.
sometimes field names are much longer than this one
Reorder criteria steps by dragging and dropping
You'll also be able to easily move the parts of your Process around on the screen to change the order of the actions, instead of having to start over if you realize that your Process needs to start off differently.
magic!
Manage Everyone’s Reports and Dashboards
It used to be hard/impossible to have true administrative rights over Reports and Dashboards, because anything saved in a user's private or personal folder remained inaccessible, even if that user was deactivated. We mentioned a previous improvement that happened in Summer '15, which gave you the option of logging in as any user (and thus gaining access to their private folders) -- but now you can do even more. Using Workbench, you can write a query that will return those hidden reports and dashboards, and allow you to delete them. (Read more here in the Spring '16 release notes.)
Salesforce1 Enhanced Charts
A flash of lightning comes to Salesforce1! Even if you'e not ready to go all in with the Lightning Experience, you can benefit from some of its shiny and new chart functionality on your phone:
good job, fundraisers!