The Official Salesforce Blog - System Administrator

• Summer '08 Feature Showcase: Enhanced Lists

  Jun 4, 2008

  Hello! It's your friendly Salesforce product manager here, with some great news to share about an awesome feature being delivered in the Summer '08 release - Enhanced Lists!

  Last year, we gave you inline editing on record detail pages. While I knew it would be a hit (or, at least, I certainly hoped it would be), I also knew that it would only be a matter of time before the requests would start pouring in for inline editing from list views. Sure enough, Tannic didn't waste any time, and 6 days after the Winter '08 release, an idea was logged. :-)

  I'm happy to announce that the new Enhanced List feature in the Summer '08 release offers you powerful, easy-to-use tools to quickly display, customize (and even edit!) lists of records imperative for your day-to-day work routine.

  The sensational new editing capabilities we've included allow you to edit a single record, or multiple - up to 200 - records, directly from a list, never leaving the page. And with a wide range of new navigation options - for example, displaying the record count (up to 2000), specifying number of records displayed per page, jump to a specific page, and first & last page links - you can find the information you’re looking for in no time.

  We also included drag-and-drop support for moving columns around, as well as changing a column's width by dragging the right side of the column header.

  For those of you who have created custom mass action buttons to act on multiple records in a list view, we also now remember selections across multiple pages. Gone are the days of selecting records on a single page, then clicking the action button, then going to the next page, selecting more records, etc.

  In order to realize the full benefit of this feature, administrators must turn on both the "Enable Inline Editing" and "Enable Enhanced Lists" preferences from the Setup | Customize | User Interface page.

  Full Disclosure: There are also some things about this new feature that we want to improve upon in the near future. For one, the fields excluded from inline editing on list views are the same ones excluded on detail pages (Opportunity Stage, Opportunity Forecast Category, Contract Status, most Task and Event fields) with the addition of Opportunity Amount, Opportunity Quantity, Lead Status, and Case Status. The good news is that we're working closely with other teams internally to get these fields enabled for you as soon as we can. (Note that some of these fields already have mass action buttons on list views so you still have a way to edit them.) Also, for companies using record types, the list view has to have filter criteria specified that restricts the result set to one record type in order for editing to be available. There are similar filter restrictions for tasks and events as well, but you can read all about it in both the Summer '08 release notes, as well as the online help. Just navigate to any list view, and click the "Help for this Page" link in the upper right.

  We know we still have some work to do, but hopefully you'll find these new enhancements to be both time-saving and fun to use. Everyone have a great summer, and keep those ideas coming!

  -- Eric

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• Winter '08 Release Update

  Oct 18, 2007

        
  The long-anticipated Winter '08 release is just around the corner!  Winter '08 is our 24th generation release and comes with some pretty exciting announcements. First, we've renamed our platform to Force.com to represent all of the new advancements we've made, the most exciting of which is Visualforce, our new user-interface as a service! In addition to the new platform features, we'll also release two brand new applications: Salesforce Content and Salesforce Ideas. Finally, we have (of course) made many exciting enhancements to all of our CRM applications. 

  Those of you who attended Dreamforce have already seen an impressive preview of all the new features we've delivered since the summer release in August -- but for a closer look, be sure to check out the Feature Detail Pages.
  
  In the mean time, here are the top features I'd like to highlight in the Winter '08 release:

  • Visualforce: Visualforce lets you create any application, with any user interface, for any device, all running on demand on salesforce.com's servers.  This new functionality is incredibly powerful for all the developers and partners who want to build exciting new applications.  And for end users, it means that there are endless possibilities now for more customized applications that look and work exactly as you want them to.  And since these new applications are being built on the Force.com platform, they will integrate with your existing Salesforce applications and come with all the benefits of our multi-tenant infrastructure.
  • Tagging and Inline Editing : Both of these two web 2.0 features leverage the force.com platform and make all your Salesforce applications even easier to use -- which means you'll see increases in adoption, data quality, and productivity.
  • Content: One of the newest additions to the Salesforce suite of applications, Salesforce Content helps you share and manage documents, presentations, multi-media files and other business content by harnessing popular Web 2.0 functionality like tagging, rating, subscriptions and full-text search. No more calling and emailing around the office looking for the latest presentation -- Salesforce Content will place those important documents right at your fingertips.
  • Ideas: Another brand-new application, Salesforce Ideas helps you get connected to your communities by providing an interactive, online community delivered as a service.  As with every Salesforce application, there's no software or hardware to manage.  Great ideas can come from anywhere, and Salesforce Ideas lets your communities post and vote on ideas so that the best ideas get bubbled to the top.  Start collecting innovative ideas, holding discussions and watching the best ideas from your communities shape your business. 
  • Campaign Hierarchies: Marketers often employ multiple tactics to generate demand for a particular product or program--SEM, Direct Mail, Events, etc--with Campaign Hierarchies, you can easily associate these tactical campaigns to a parent campaign, up to five levels deep, and see roll-up performance metrics. This feature gets my vote for most exciting--for us marketers here at salesforce.com, it's been nothing less than life-changing.
  • Salesforce to Salesforce: Collaborating with your partners reaches new heights with Salesforce to Salesforce. If your partners also use Salesforce, you can now directly and securely exchange data such as leads, opportunities, and custom objects through Salesforce.  Improve efficiency and be assured that your data--and your partner's data--is always up to date.

  Winter '08 is one of our biggest releases yet and delivers way more features than I can cover here.  Be sure to check out the Admin Preview for an overview of all the great new functionality you've come to expect from our releases.  Be sure to keep checking this blog for more resources, including the release schedule, the Winter '08 Video tour and the Release notes.  Finally, our pre-release program is now available so sign up to try out the new features in your own test environment.

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• Five Ways to Prepare for Winter '08

  Oct 18, 2007

    The Winter '08 release is just around the corner--as an administrator, you probably can't wait to get your hands on all of the popularly requested features! We've put together five simple steps for you to follow in order to get ready for the changes coming your way so you can maximize adoption and take your success to the next level.
  
  1. Learn

  • Read over the Admin Preview to familiarize yourself with the new features being delivered.
  • Check out the feature detail pages on Successforce for a quick reference on particular features or product areas you're interested in.
  • Dig into the Release Notes for a complete guide to

  2. Play
  

  • There's no better way to learn about the new release than by rolling up your sleeves and getting hands-on. Be sure to sign up for our pre-release program where you can get your very own test environment to play with before the release goes live in your Salesforce instance.
  • If you create some great custom apps, objects or s-controls, you can package them up and publish them privately to the AppExchange. Once Winter '08 goes live, you can easily install them to your production instance.

  3. Assess
  
  For the major features of Winter '08, we recommend that you identify 3 must-have features for your company. Maintaining this narrow focus will enable you to better execute on your CRM vision. To identify these must have features, consider these questions:

     

  • What is the CRM vision for your company? Which features empower your organization to bring this vision to the next level?
  • What are the main pain points in your business process? Which features would alleviate these pain points?
  • Do you have customer-facing organizations or processes that are still not on Salesforce? Use this new release as the compelling event for extending your success to the rest of the organization.

  4. Implement

  • Revisit the salesforce.com Rollout Guide for ideas on creating a successful implementation process.
  • Consider engaging Professional Services for more complicated features or simply an adoption assessment.
  • Be sure to dig into the Release Notes for detailed implementation notes.

  5. Communicate:
  
  You'll want to be sure to communicate to your end users the changes that are coming their way. Salesforce gives you several options:

  • Send a mass email to all your users by clicking Setup -> Manage Users -> Mass Email Users
  • Create announcements on the home page by clicking Setup -> Customize -> Home -> Home Page Components -> Messages and Alerts
  • Consider End User Training for key influencers.

  Be sure to keep checking this blog for updates and other release news!

     
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• AppExchange 101 Webcast: Everything You Need to Extend Your CRM Implementation

  Jun 5, 2006

  Join us for a FREE AppExchange Webinar — Live on June 14, at 11:00 AM PST. AppExchange is the first and only online marketplace for sharing applications. It makes finding and deploying new on-demand apps easy. Many of the apps in the AppExchange are free and all are pre-integrated with Salesforce. There are more than 250 apps to choose from including applications for every department like sales, service, HR, finance —and more. Find everything from project management to recruiting to email marketing and beyond. Learn what you need to know to get started with AppExchange. Plus, get all your questions answered in a live Q&A. Register for our free AppExchange 101 Webcast now.

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