Honey, it’s cold outside!
Once again, release time is upon us. (And I have to say, the logo picked for Winter 13 is pretty freaking adorable!)
Click through for the release notes!
One of my favorite things that I get to do with this blog is share all the updates that I’m excited about with each release. Now I know that Salesforce is most excited about Touch going GA, but I think that there are a lot of great little nuggets in this release that are more impactful. Here we go!
Chatter Polls – This is a tiny addition to Chatter, giving users the ability to post a poll question & solicit feedback. It’s simple, but way easier than posting a text question & having to read through all the comments. Just a small enhancement that has the potential to add a lot of value. I’ll also bundle in here the minor Chatter navigation adjustments that were made. I think these are just a cleaner way to navigate through Chatter.
Organization-Wide Permission Sets – This one is huge, especially for larger organizations or those using multiple license types. This allows admins to create a permission set that can be used with any type of Salesforce license (standard license, Platform, etc). It’s a great way to not have to duplicate effort (which was the point of permission sets anyway!).
Workflow Evaluation page – Salesforce listened to feedback that this page is often confusing for admins. Personally, I didn’t have issue, but when trying to teach others, I saw lots of smart folks struggle with this step. With Winter 13, Salesforce has added clarification to help in authoring workflow rules.
Updates for Joined Reports – With the Analytics release at the beginning of the year, it was only a matter of time before people started asking to extend the functionality. One of the biggest drawback was the inability to use joined reports on dashboards. With Winter 13, now you can! You can also now print joined reports.
Updates to the Schema Builder – What started as a visual only has really evolved to a great configuration tool. Past releases brought the ability to add objects & fields, but with Winter 13, admins now have delete functions available in the schema builder as well. This is an awesome productivity enhancement & will definitely be driving me to spend even more time in the schema builder. I love it!
I didn’t talk about the Data.com improvements at all (and there are TONS), because I’m currently not a Data.com customer, so it’s hard for me to evaluate those changes. Are any of you using them? What features did I miss that you’re most excited about?