What better way to start off the New Year than with the excitement of salesforce.com’s Winter ’07 release! As with all of salesforce.com's releases, the upgrade path is seamless. When you log in on Monday morning all the popularly requested features of Winter '07 will be right there at your fingertips. 

Make sure your organization is ready for the new release with our prep list:   

1. Educate yourself on the new features and functionality in the Winter '07 release 

• Watch the Winter '07 Release Video Tour for a walk through of the new features
• Visit the Feature Detail pages on Successforce.com for an overview of what’s new
• Dig into the Release Notes for more detail on new features
• Consider a New Feature Workshop

2. Identify which features your company should consider adopting and pitch them to the appropriate executives. 

• Potential features might include Salesforce Console, Popup reminders, or Embedded Mashups 
• Learn from customer experts how to turn change management into a reality and successfully manage salesforce.com releases 
• Get ahead of the curve and learn tools to drive adoption across your user base

3. Highlight two or three new features which will help make your reps more productive and find ways to drive adoption

• Potential features might include Lotus Notes, Enhanced Activity Management, or the new UI customization. 
• To introduce these exciting features to your team you might refer to the best practice post on creating a monthly newsletter as well as the post on sending mass emails to your users from within Salesforce.

4. Check out the Winter ’07 Apex Platform and the new features it enables

• The Salesforce Console enables a Business Web Desktop for higher productivity—check out our Tip Sheet on using the Salesforce Console
• Apex allows for Mashups— Mashups use features of other web applications combined with your Salesforce application. You can now embed mashups in dashboards and your detail page layouts such as Accounts or Contacts. Find out more on custom s-controls with this tutorial and check out some great examples from Dreamforce ‘06 in Business Mashups: Best of the Web
• Work Flow and approvals can help you automate even more business processes. Read Getting Started with the Approvals Process and view useful approval process examples

5. Browse the AppExchange directory for additional on-demand apps you might want to install

• Potential AppExchange apps might include SalesSleuth, Diamond Data, Net Documents and Shipping 2.0 for partners who are taking advantage of new Winter ’07 functionality
• Watch the overview on how to install new applications into your Salesforce account.