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Spring '20 Abridged

The Salesforce Discord Collective Presents:
THE SPRING 20 RELEASE NOTES - ABRIDGED
Bug Fixes & Various Impro… wait this isn’t the app changelog.

CRITICAL STUFF

GENERAL STUFF

FLOWS, PROCESSES

Stephen King reported crying in a corner as flow team continues to be KILLIN’ IT for the second release in a row.
As an aside we recommend subscribing to the Flow Product Owner’s blog ( rss ) for insane stuff that may not be ready for full release.

Breaking the List format for a second here, because those changes are massive. First, this means Process Builder are less relevant in a lot of cases, as they run after a DML. Here, before stuff touches the database, Flows can run and edit values on the record. This is FAST AS FUCK and plays well with limits. Combined with Scheduled Flows, this means that you can remove quite a few processes that had long-runing paused interviews (replace that PB that says “set contract to expired after end date in the past” with a scheduled Flow that will run daily). In short - if you’re an admin, you know Process Builder, but you don’t know Flows, go to trailhead NOW or ask for training ASAP because your job will depend on it medium-term.

COMMUNITIES

  • Account Hierarchies via Parent Accounts can be used for record sharing (Beta) so you can see child account information if you own a Parent.
  • Salesforce CMS can now post to other systems - including heroku, completely custom endpoints, etc. I imagine this means you could technically use Salesforce CMS to federate content from even external sites and allow Marketing to handle it all in Salesforce, but the Help page is decidedly not forthcoming. I would tag this as “keep an eye on it, see what SF hatches”. Probably not fully baked, hence why they’re not putting it in the spotlight.
  • Report Builder now GA as is Report Viewing. However “You can give permission to create and edit reports to all role-based external users with licenses such as Customer Community Plus and Partner Community. You can also give permission to all legacy role-based portal licenses such as Customer Portal and Gold Partner.” So in short no license requirements change.
  • Playground App on iOS and Android to test how communities look like in mobile app

EMAILS

SERVICE

SMALL RANDOM THINGS THAT ARE NICE

DEVELOPMENT

  • @track no longer required for LWC which will make unupdated code samples and documentation confusing for new comers, but is otherwise a nice change
  • Wire Adapters Not Guaranteed to Emit the Same Data and we’re all confused as to how exactly the data could be different to be honest.
  • Calendars, Communities now available and customizable vi API
  • That pre-fill records via URL thing from above is also usable via dev
  • Embedded Services for Web (AKA Snapins, AKA LiveAgentButtonsV2) now support LWC embeds
  • Communities search parameter changed to :term - legacy parameter :searchString deprecated but supported.
  • You get an API Call.YOU GET AN API CALL. EVERYONE GETS API CALLS

CPQ - by Mekel

EINSTEIN ANALYTICS - by Supergrape

  • Easily find where your data is being used/comes from with Data Catalog.
  • Row limit expanded to 10 billion from 1 billion for Analytics Plus licenses.
  • A slew of new connectors added to plug in your other CRMs!
  • Do you have a gigantic… Opportunity object? Does the Data Flow take so long to run that you can’t run it every 15 minutes? Well now you can split your Opportunity (and any other object) into it’s own scheduled sync to let your Dataflow run faster! Also upped the limit from 30 dataflows to 100.
  • Inheriting security from Salesforce got a little better, still kind of bad though.
  • You can now use SOQL to query Salesforce Data directly, no dataset required!
  • Built in “Data Blending”, come on Salesforce, it’s called a join. Everyone knows it’s a join, why cause naming confusions. Nice that they’re trying to limit the need for SAQL though.
  • Record Actions now have the Lightning theme and can trigger a Flow or Lightning Action.
  • Native GUI support for modifying the XMD on datasets is getting much better. It’s almost as good as the old Heroku tool that already did all of this.
  • I’ve pretty much always worked EA in Prod, looks like they may be supporting that idea now by allowing you to work on a new version of a dashboard then Publish it when it’s ready.

Field Service Lightning

  • Shifts for FSL (beta) allow you to create flexible working hours which was previously a major headache for any company that didn't have a weekly recurring schedule (read: LIKE EVERY COMPANY)
    • Can be used in conjunction with Operating Hours
    • Basically looks like you can assign people to one-off shifts rather than being forced to implement recurring shifts that can only recur per day-of-the-week.Alternative till now is a ton of temp records and teaching admins how to data load square pegs in a circle hole. Requires more analysis and more than 1 screenshot to see full capability and whether it can fully replace Op Hours, though.
    • comes with a fancy lightning component to see and manage people's assigned shifts.
  • Maintenance Plans now post in chatter to let you know before the VP of Operations that the last-minute PB you slipped in at 2am last night caused 3000 work orders to fail on creation
  • Field Service Mobile
    • Global actions are now available from TOP LEVEL screens, which is HUGE. IT IS SAD HOW HUGE THIS IS. Right in line with opening up mobile app customization to developers. "YOU'RE WELCOME" - Salesforce, probably
    • As opposed to being a total black box, you can now manually sync your app for offline use on-demand. Great QoL improvement especially for testing.

BLAST FROM THE PAST

DOGELAND

This abridged version was graciously written up by the SF Discord

We have a nice wiki: https://wiki.sfxd.org/

And a linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sfxd/

Join the ~1900 members in the most active chat-based community around Salesforce these parts of the web at http://join.sfxd.org/

1 Comment
#1    Windyo   Windyo commented 4 years ago

STUFF WE LIKED BUT CUT TO STAY ABRIDGED

Einstein Prediction Builder now has a small free tier so you can explore it to your heart's content
Flow variable handling now simpler in that you don't handle variables manually at all anymore and also you can do SELECT * FROM Sobject.
Keyboard Shortcuts for those who found the new editor clunky
Apple now available as an ID provider for external auth
Email Threading in Activities is a small QoL change that'll help users nicely
You can connect LinkedIn Lead Gen Ads to Salesforce and with the new release you can map Consent fields as well.
An early version of Lightning Message Service is now available but is obviously not ready for primetime.
CPQ - Expand or Collapse Bundles by Default – Users with large quotes will probably benefit the most from this. You can now automatically expand or collapse bundles with a package setting on the Line Editor tab.
EA - I've never had a GREAT experience with the templates but they are piling them on. Retail Business Results, Native Adoption Analytics, and Accuracy Analytics.
EA - Bind...Interaction Editor added, should make creating Interactions less tedious.
EA - I thought they added in Grand Totals and Sub Totals last release? (I checked, they did...)
EA - Selection and Result Binding now changed to "Interactions", same as the rename of a Step last release I wonder if they'll change the naming in JSON.
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