Skip to main content

Spring '19 Abridged


The Salesforce Discord Collective Presents:
THE SPRING 19 RELEASE NOTES - ABRIDGED
As Exciting as the new Samsung WV9900 release


CRITICAL STUFF

If GDPR is important to you, you should read the entire "Email Experience" section.

TL;DR:

GENERAL STUFF

    • You can pin List Views now. FINALLY users can go to an object page and view directly what they need without an extra click and waiting for LEX to load over the course of a coffee being served! ... Except there's no way to set the default Pinned Lists as an Admin, and so your users will need to know this new feature exists. And do it themselves. For each object. Almost got it Salesforce... ALMOST.
    • Cloning Sandboxes is now available for everyone.
    • Gmail integration now much better and actually saves you time.
    • We called it last time, but if this doesn’t convince you we can’t help you. Salesforce For Outlook will VERY PROBABLY be deprecated in future releases. Consider migrating to a cloud based solution.
    • Permission Set Groups are now a thing and allow you to package permission sets together. Yes, Salesforce is pushing Permission Sets hard, and yes, you will learn to love it.
    we'll use our tool a bit more as this was deleted from the release
  • Einstein Activity Capture now syncs contacts and events, so other people can see stuff without the license. It also gets more reporting capaiblities.

FLOWS AND PROCESSES

  • New flow builderrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Yes we already said this and no we don’t care. NO MORE FLASH BABY
  • Processes and Flows can now reference External Objects. That’s pretty much a game changer.
  • Processes can now be triggered on Errors - specifically on Batch Apex Platform Event (BatchApexErrorEvent) and Platform Status Alert Event (PlatformStatusAlertEvent).
  • Flows now have Adress field types in screens (and image too)

SALES CLOUD

SERVICE CLOUD

MARKETING

COMMUNITIES

Tons of small quality of life updates.
Like literal tons.

If you’re a big communities user you should read the appropriate section

LIGHTNING

CPQ

If you use Avalara for Salesforce Billing, do not upgrade to Salesforce Billing Spring ’19 without following these instructions .

EINSTEIN ANALYTICS

  • Dataflows can be set to run on event-based scheduling rather than a time-based schedule! This should be a great way to blow through your 24-hour Dataflow sync limit, but they also increased 24-hour Dataflow limit from 50 to 60. Not a huge change this release but it has doubled from 30 since this time last year.
  • Need help troubleshooting why a Dataflow is taking so long to run? Well, this new feature isn’t that! Set Analytics up to send you an angry email if a Dataflow takes longer than a predefined amount of time to run! Let me tell you, this is super useful /s
  • Combo Chart Upgrayedd! (too old of a reference? I’m sticking with it…) Ability to specify if a measure is a bar or a line and a bonus of being able to stack the bars! Sounds minor but is a pretty significant change to this chart’s usability.
  • Einstein Analytics Classic (Wave 1.0) is being retired for good. In July 2019 all existing Wave 1.0 Dashboards will be disabled. Go ahead and start clicking that “Convert” button and watch the Dashboards explode because that button has never worked.

DEV

BUGFIXES

LIGHTS ARE ON BUT NOBODY’S HOME

  • Remember the Cloud Scheduler, where you could offer appointment slots ? Well it’s back as Lightning Scheduler. Available if you pay, and only for enterprise and Performance editions. Literally Pay2Win.
  • Process Builders now have templates! … Oh wait, no, they added a checkbox in the metadata so you can say “is template”, but the checkbox does nothing. Eh, just ship it, it’s not like your users are used ot using metadata…
  • New Flow Type to let users request help… They literally created a new object and matching permissions for what is a glorified LiveAgent chat start.
  • Tests can now test process Scheduled Actions and Resume Events. “Declarative stuff done by an admin” but testing is done in code, shit never goan get used ayyy lmao

DIDN’T QUITE MAKE THE CUT

  • BigObjects can now be created from the setup, instead of the metadata API. They day they remove the need to use Async APEX to feed data into BigObjects is the day I push that update to “Critical Stuff”. Still cool as hell.
  • In Sandbox only, you can see references to a field before editing it. The day they push THAT to GA is going to be a damn celebration by all admins.
  • Sandbox Email Adresses change format. Not super major nor interesting… but if you’re a dev and you’re waiting for that =example.com you’re going to have a bad time.
  • Password complexity is better handled now… finally.

Addendum: I think this is the last time I split LEX into a different category.
Most features now are LEX-only and LEX will be activated for everyone in one year anyway.


This abridged version was graciously written up by the SF Discord https://discord.gg/JG4Bc4q
We have a website where we host best practices and other resources: https://sfxd.github.io

And we're also present on LinkedIn, where we post these release notes: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sfxd/