After a short period of blindly exploring a pre-release Spring ’14 org, the release notes are now available.
With Salesforce1 released recently it’s unsurprising that Spring ’14 isn’t a significant release in terms of new features and that a lot of the highlights are currently at Pilot status. I expected a low-key release with incremental improvements to Salesforce1, the usual evolution to Chatter and a number of older pre-release features becoming GA – this would seem to be the case. A few personal highlights below in no particular order, following a quick read of the release notes.
Skills and Endorsements (Pilot) – Skills reference data (ProfileSkill) can be added and associated with People (ProfileSkillUser). The skills profile for a User is displayed on the Chatter profile page and each skill can be endorsed by other users (ProfileSkillEndorsement). Skills can be managed via Chatter or via the Setup pages (Manage Users etc.). Interesting LinkedIn style concept.
Feed-Based Page Layouts – The Case Feed experience now available for Account, Contact, Lead, Opportunity and Custom Objects. The concept here is to split the record feed from the record details via tabs, enabling a more focused view with easy switching. For implementations where Chatter is used extensively at the record level, this provides a convenient efficiency.
Sharing Sets Enhancements (Pilot) – Sharing sets for HVPU now support indirect lookups to Account, Contact, Case, Service Contract, User and Custom Object records. Previously only directly related records to the Account and Contact were accessible, now a second level of related records can be accessed.
Launch Flows from Workflow (Flow Triggers) – A new Flow Trigger Workflow Action has been added which enables UI-less flows to be executed as per standard workflow actions (email, task etc.). This could provide a non-code alternative to Apex Triggers in some cases.
Orders / Place Order REST API – Basic standard objects and accompanying REST API to support the order management process (contract, orders and order products). There doesn’t appear to be any relationship (or automated synchronisation) with Opportunity or Quote. Definitely a feature intended for customisation.
API Limit App Quotas (Pilot) – Connected Apps can have 24 hour API quotas set for standard, bulk and streaming API consumption. I like where this is heading in terms of providing proactive API management tools – up to this point it’s all been reactive.
New User Interface for Monitoring Deployments – Clean new UI to view (and cancel) running deployments made via the metadata API.
Visualforce Remote Objects (Developer Preview) – Data proxies for standard objects that make SObject DML operations directly accessible in JavaScript code without the need for @RemoteAction methods. Another highly useful feature for developing in JavaScript which also avoids API limit consumption (as per JavaScript remoting).
Canvas App Accessible from the Salesforce1 Menu – Force.com Canvas apps can now be placed directly into the Salesforce1 navigation menu. I think we’ll see Canvas becoming a more important technology in the future as integration at the application level becomes more widespread. Where some degree of application blending is achievable, UI-level integration can be significantly less expensive to implement than at the data-level.
Independent Auto-Number Sequence for Unit Tests – It’s always puzzled me as to why the auto-number sequence increments in response to the creation of test data records (which are ultimately rolled-back). Surely, the unit test context should be better isolated? Anyway, with Spring ’14 we can now set the flag below to achieve this.
Develop->Apex Test Execution->Options->Independent Auto-Number Sequence
Usage Metrics (Pilot) – ISVs can now access the following metrics (via API only) per subscriber org:
Record count for custom objects
Access count for Visualforce pages (over the last 24 hours)
This feature requires an Environment Hub setup, with one org designated as the reporting org where the metrics are delivered. This long awaited feature will be well received by the ISV community.
View and Manage User Sessions – View and invalidate (end) user sessions as required. A useful administrator feature.
Mass Assign Permission Sets – At long last users can be assigned-to and removed-from Permission Sets en-masse. Previously this was a painful user-at-a-time process.
Analytics API Available in Apex – All the capabilities of the REST Analytics API are now available directly to Apex, enabling reports to run etc. (..Reports.ReportManager.runReport(myReportId)..).