Salesforce Spring 15' Release

Spring Is in the Air!

Salesforce.com will roll out the Spring ’15 Release to all remaining instances this weekend.  For many of our users, years go by before they even realize the cute little Salesforce icon on the top left corner has changed from an Eskimo to a little birdie. Because in many releases, little that is upfront and meaningful to the average Salesforce user actually happens. But Spring ’15 is different.

At least in part as a response to the burgeoning community of Salesforce users, this release contains at least 250 new and improved features, more than 100 of which are in direct response to IdeaExchange posts in the Salesforce user community.

While there is still the valuable behind the scenes work that makes the Salesforce engine go, there are two key features of this release that should be immediately valuable for all users: enhancements to Process Builder (beta) and the addition of Data.com Duplicate Management.

Process Builder is a powerful tool in Salesforce that enhances the features available with workflows while adding new features of creating records, updating related records, and calling apex methods.  Prior to Process Builder, these new features were only possible through triggers. Wait … sorry, what? Remember when you wanted to create a new record when some magical point in your sales / marketing / service process was reached, and your friendly Salesforce consultant would say those expensive words, “I can do that with a trigger”? Well, no more. Process Builder has enabled native point-and-click features that ease the burden of complex triggers that become quickly outdated with more nimble, flexible functionality. Process Builder is available to orgs with Enterprise and above licenses.

But wait … there’s more! If we had a dollar for every time someone asked, “What’s the best duplicate checker for Salesforce?” and we responded, “A person!” For the first time, Salesforce has added native functionality (Data.com Duplicate Management) to help prevent and alert of duplication in your Salesforce org.  With these new features, Salesforce will be able to “block” a user from duplicating records based off pre-determined logic or alert of a possible duplication with reporting tools. Duplicate Management is available to orgs with Professional and above licenses – and it does not require a Data.com license.

Click here for more details about the Spring ’15 Release and a list of all the new functionality and features in Salesforce.

Josh Hunt
Lead Salesforce Engineer