Big Salesforce update this week

Last Updated on Thursday, 4 January 2007 06:04 Written by Steve Thursday, 4 January 2007 04:26

Salesforce.com is once again making a major January release. And I mean major. There are giant changes happening at every level of the application, and it starts this weekend.

So what do you need to do? Hopefully nothing. Hopefully the release will go well and you’ll be using Salesforce.com the day after the upgrade. Last year at this time the upgrade caused a number of outages which caused Salesforce.com to invest $50M in making their systems more robust. I expect that those investments will pay off and we won’t notice any problems.

Here are the big changes, and I will only hit on the highest level because the PDF of all the changes is 200+ pages long:

1. Better Process Enforcement
1. We’ll be able to have approvals and workflow on new/changed records
2. I can override standard button functionality–the Clone button can do whatever I want it to do. No more training folks, “Don’t ever create a new Contact where it says Create New Contact. I know, just trust me”
3. We can do custom validation of fields on save and edit
2. Changes to calendaring and to-do items
1. A new slick calendar UI
2. Pop up reminders for tasks and events
3. Cool UI improvements
1. Lots of AJAX stuff that you’ll love, especially around related list data display
2. A customizable home page
3. We’ll be able to embed custom code on the detail page–this is really cool, even though it doesn’t sound it
4. Customization marches forward
1. More things will be changeable
2. More things can be put on the Appechange
5. API enhancements
1. The new API is killer. Just plain killer. Don’t get me started. OK, how about sorting query results? That alone is enough.
2. New dataloader for the new API. Now it will be supported
3. New AJAX toolkit and Eclipse plugin. Sorry, now I’m just a geek.
6. UPDATE: Client Mangement
   1. I forgot the new functionality for dealing with individuals! Could be very interesting…

Oh man I have a lot of work to do to even think about incorporating these changes into my work. But I’m sure not complaining!

So if you’re a current Salesforce customer, hope for the best on the upgrade and dig around when your instance changes. Then hire me to help you take advantage of the great new stuff!

2 Comments

1. Judi Sohn   |  Thursday, 04 January 2007 at 9:24 pm

   The first thing I’m looking forward to is changing those last few button fields to make them more relevant to our nonprofit workflow. For example, one of our folks complained about the “Log a Call” button because she didn’t know where to record a phone conversation. When I told her that “Log a Call” was like a salesperson’s call, even if it’s on the phone, she wasn’t happy. “I am NOT a salesperson.” If I’m understanding the release notes correctly, I’ll be able to change that.

   I want to be able to add a field that totals a column from a related list (so I can see the total donations for a contact without running a report or using a dashboard).

   I’m looking forward to the calendar/UI changes.

   I’m a little bummed that contact management won’t be unveiled this weekend, but hopefully it will be worth the wait. That’s going to be a big change for us.

   I’ve already set aside some time on Sunday to go in and make sure it all makes sense before our folks see it on Monday. Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be running a backup…just in case.

   
2. gokubi.com » Blog Archive » Quick wins for Winter ‘07   |  Monday, 08 January 2007 at 2:45 pm

   [...] I mentioned earlier that Winter ‘07 has more changes than I’ll be able to incorporate any time soon. But as my first customer site was upgraded yesterday I found there were some quick wins that took almost no time at all: [...]