Release Readiness, for the Summer Set

It’s summer. Or sort of summer in the Northwest. Your program work is probably in full swing for the season, you’re busy, and let’s face it, you’d love to be outside. You’ve received a series of emails announcing that a new Salesforce release is on its way next month, with links to copious documentation and day-long webcasts to get you up to speed. Of course you want to know how the changes help and affect your organization, but…summer! So what’s a conscientious and sun-loving database administrator to do? Read on!

Don’t worry– we have you covered! Below you’ll find a list of some of the new features and fields in the Summer ’14 Salesforce release that we think you’ll find of use. This list goes well with a tall lemonade and sunny spot on the deck.

Summer (feature) festival, for users:

• Never scroll again! Staff will be able to pin their favorite report folders to the top of the list for easy access.

• Make chatter more helpful. A new post type in Chatter, called Questions, will let users pose questions to co-workers, and its built-in “suggested answers” function will propose similar discussions and even Salesforce Knowledge articles to help them get to work.

• Watch campaign progress. With some new Shared Activities functionality, your campaign and development managers will be able to report on how staff is interacting with constituents.

• Go big. You will now be able to receive emails and attach files of up to 25MB, up from 10MB.

• One-click wonders. Improvements to the mobile app, Salesforce1, make life easier. You will add contacts right after meetings, with a link from “Today”; drill down to campaign member lists and see the reports behind dashboards.

Sunny days for the admin:

• Can’t remember where that setting is? An improved Setup Search will let you find your custom objects and custom fields, too. (This one makes me a little giddy!)

• People can say more with increased character limits on long text and rich text fields

• Make some home improvements with an easy rich text editor and a visualforce area for your Home page.

• Sync to Salesforce more easily with improvements to Salesforce for Outlook, including support for Exchange Online (Office 365).

• And finally, take control without leaving your deck, because you will have improved access to administrative tasks from your phone, with the SalesforceA mobile app.

Have a rainy day to dive deeper? You can read the full documentation online, join the discussion on the Success Release Readiness page, or watch some quick videos. And, of course, give us a call if we can help you hone in on how all your tools can meet your mission and engage more supporters.

Now, how about another lemonade?