Salesforce Features
January 2008
Drag-and-drop Calendaring
Enhanced Calendar Views
All Editions
- Reduce the clicks required to reschedule events
- Improve the user experience in navigating and viewing calendars
Tasks and calendar events give managers and employees the power and flexibility to track and maintain their schedules using Salesforce. Drag-and-drop calendars and activity management, new in the Spring ’08 release, allow users to more quickly reschedule a meeting and perform other actions via a new streamlined, time-saving user interface.
Hierarchy Visibility Override
Visibility Control beyond the Hierarchy Model
Developer, Enterprise, and Unlimited Editions
- Design a visibility model to suit your application’s business requirements
- Provide more flexibility for configuring the visibility of objects
With Spring ’08, administrators can define for custom objects whether users at higher levels in the role or territory hierarchy can access the data of users at a lower level. For maximum flexibility, administrators can define hierarchy visibility on an object-by-object level.
Dashboard Scheduling
Scheduling When Dashboards are Automatically Refreshed and Mailed
Enterprise and Unlimited Editions
- Consistently provide the most up-to-date data
- Improve user adoption with dashboards that are pushed out to users
A dashboard is a group of charts or components that graphically display your custom report data. With Spring ’08, authorized users will be able to schedule when dashboards are automatically refreshed and emailed to a set of users.
Sandbox to Production
Migrate Configuration Changes from Sandbox to Production with Ease
Developer, Enterprise, and Unlimited Editions
- Select, extract and write configuration and code changes from one environment to another
- Share and merge work done in independent development environments
Spring '08 streamlines the deployment of code and metadata changes from sandbox to production. Leveraging the power of the Metadata API, you can now use the Force.com Toolkit for Eclipse or any tool to easily copy custom fields, custom objects, picklists, record types, scontrols, documents, folders, and apex classes and triggers that you develop in sandbox into production.
API Session Auto Refresh
Constant API Sessions During Integrations
Developer, Enterprise, and Unlimited Edition
- Reduce Integration Complexity
- Increase developer Productivity
With Spring '08, API sessions automatically refresh themselves as long an API client is active. Sessions are subject to the session timeout policy set for your organization in the same way as the User Interface. API session auto refresh allows developers to simplify their coding and simply rely on the activity of their client to keep their sessions alive.
Advanced Validation Rule Functions
Enhance Data Quality With the Power and Ease of Formulas
All Editions
- Validate important data formats like social security numbers and postal codes
- Use reference data in other objects as a basis for validation
In the quest to ensure the highest data quality, business rules can get quite complex. The Spring ’08 release includes advanced formula functions that administrators can use to create powerful validation rules without writing code.
Dynamic Approval Routing
Build Sophisticated Approval Processes
Developer, Enterprise, and Unlimited Editions
- Harness the power of Apex to drive dynamic routing
- Streamline approval process management
Approval processes, which were released with Winter ’07, make it possible to standardize, automate, and enforce an organization’s approval processes. With Spring ’08, companies can programmatically control approval routing as well, to take their process automation to whole new level.
Apex Code in Enterprise Edition
Create Any Business Logic as a Service
Now Available in Enterprise Edition and Unlimited Edition
- Develop and customize applications on demand
- Create powerful business logic that runs on salesforce.com servers
- Use Apex code to publish new Web services
With Apex—the world’s first on-demand programming language—developers can use the Force.com platform to create and run any business logic and application. With Spring ’08, all Salesforce Enterprise Edition customers will have access to Apex code. All Enterprise Edition and Unlimited Edition customers will also receive a new Apex Sandbox for development and testing of Apex code.
Visualforce Custom Components
Reusable User Interface Components
Developer Preview
- Build a multi-step wizard
- Leverage data and logic in external systems
- Display related information from Salesforce or other systems on a single screen
A breakthrough for the Force.com platform, Visualforce is a new technology developers can use to create any type of user interface for Salesforce applications and Force.com custom applications. Visualforce has everything developers need to build rich, interactive applications and user experiences for a variety of audiences, applications, and devices. Developers are finally free to reinvent traditional Salesforce interfaces or create new interfaces for custom applications.
Apex Code Packaging
Develop and Publish Apex-Powered Applications to the AppExchange
Developer, Enterprise, and Unlimited Edition
- Develop, package, and publish Apex-powered components or applications to the AppExchange
- Install Apex-powered components and applications from the AppExchange into any Salesforce edition
With Apex—the world’s first on-demand programming language—developers can create and run any business logic and application on the Force.com platform. And with Spring ’08, developers can package and deploy Apex code as unmanaged, managed, or certified packages. Now packaged applications can be deployed in editions that do not have the ability to author Apex Code and provide an upgrade path for applications with managed and certified packages.
