Here comes the Sun!
It seems like just yesterday that I was blogging about the Spring 11 release, and yet there’s already a buzz about what’s coming out this summer. I was able to take some time this week to read through the release notes, and there are definitely several things that I’m excited about. In no particular order – here’s my Summer ’11 highlight list:
Enhanced Profile UI – Hallelujah!! Every admin knows how much it sucks changing permissions on profiles. The new UI will help to streamline the process, drastically reducing the number of clicks it will take to update permissions and settings. I am not exaggerating when I say this is hours & hours of productivity gained for admins.
Loads of Chatter updates – The first 10 pages of details in the release notes are dedicated to Chatter enhancements. If it wasn’t already apparent, the Collaboration Cloud is definitely where efforts are focused for the foreseeable future. There is a ton going on here, but what I’m looking forward most are:
Chatter favorites (a great way to parse out details/topics from your Chatter feed)
Searchable @-mentions
Personal Chatter stats on your profile
The ability to set a default email frequency for new groups that you join & setting the out-of-the-box default to off (Why the heck was the default set to daily for all new groups? Email overload!)
Tips-and-tricks Chatty User – this is going to be great for new Chatter rollouts. A system user that will post & give examples of good Chatter content, with no effort required from an admin
Automagic comes to Salesforce Knowledge – I use ‘automagic’ to refer to workflow rules and approval processes – the stuff that makes Salesforce effortless for users. With the Summer 11 release, these are now available in Salesforce Knowledge
Yay for analytics! – I like data. Doing this job, how can you not? So any enhancements to analytics is a win in my book. In Summer 11, we have two small but important changes to look forward to: faster loading of the preview of results & multiple field selection for adding them to reports. Granted, these will only apply if you are using the new report builder, but you should be anyway – it’s an adjustment, but once you get used to it, you’ll never go back.
Analytics add-ons – on top of those changes, you will also have the ability to purchase add-ons to supplement your analytic limitations (more scheduled refreshes, more dynamic dashboard, etc). I’m thrilled that Salesforce is giving customers this option, and I hope that the cost is reasonable. This is great of organizations that are metric-heavy & really want to fully leverage the power of dashboards.
It’s small, but for those of you lucky enough to be on UE – your limit on custom fields just increased from 500 to 800 per object. Consider me jealous.
The one real bummer for me is that there isn’t a ton going on for the Sales Cloud – just 2 pages in the release notes, and all simple enhancements to existing functionality. Probably the most notable is that Content Workspaces will now be called Libraries. I’m hoping that the lack of changes for the Sales Cloud means that there will be some huge changes that will be announced at Dreamforce 11. Wishful thinking maybe, but not completely out in left field.
What are you most looking forward to in Summer 11? Did I completely skip over something that you can’t wait for? Share!
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