Exciting Features in the Salesforce Summer ‘10 Release

Exciting Features in the Salesforce Summer ‘10 Release

A huge benefit of using Salesforce in our organization is that we are automatically upgraded to the latest version of the application.  Some of the exciting features in the new release include:

1. Chatter
Salesforce Chatter brings the best of social networking (think Facebook and Twitter) to enterprise applications.  We have been participating in the beta at Sundog for the last few months.  Our professional services automation tool runs on Salesforce and the addition of Chatter is transforming how we communicate. 

2. Governor Limit Increases (yeah!)
For most organization, the governor limits imposed by Salesforce are reasonable and present few issues when architecting a solution.  When we deal with large data sets, the governor limits being to impact the solution design.  It is always great to hear when the limits are increased or removed. 
- Batch Apex Limit of 250,000 execute Method Calls a 24 hour period has been removed completely.
- Total Heap Size Increased: In a trigger context, heap size is now 300,000. In an anonymous block, Visualforce controller, or WSDL method, heap size is now 3,000,000. In a test method, heap size is now 1,500,000.

3. Dynamic Dashboards
Currently dashboards can only be run as a specific user.  If you are that user, this is not an issue.  When you are designing dashboards for a team you want to design the dashboard once and deploy, this is an issue.  Dynamic Dashboards allow you create reusable dashboards that are dynamically rendered for the specific user that is viewing the data.

4. Report Builder Enhancements (Developer Preview)
The current report builder allows a user to create reports using a wizard.  (ex. Select your criteria and run the report.)  The challenge is tweaking your reports.  You have to customize the report in the wizard and then run the report to see if you have created the desired result.  This can be time consuming and frustrating.  WIth the new report builder you can “create and edit summary reports, manage custom and advanced filters, and edit row count limits for tabular reports. Use the drag-and-drop interface to reorder columns, add and rearrange groupings, and change date granularities.”  This will save hours on a typical deployment. 

5.  Rewriting URLs for Sites
User and search engine friendly URLs are important details in a website.  At Sundog we have created workarounds to mimic this functionality.  It is nice to see that we can now leverage standard Salesforce functionality to produce the same outcome. 

6.  Cookie Support
Adding Cookie support to a website allows us to store a small amount of information on the computer of the person visiting the site.  Once we create a connection between your computer and the website, we can begin to personalize your user experience based on the information you provide and your navigation path through the site.  (Think Amazon, My Yahoo, Google, etc.)

7. Administrator Preview for Force.com Sites
Allows Web Developers and Administrators to preview a webpage prior to making it public.

8. Drag-and-Drop Dashboard Builder
Similar to the Report Builder, the Drag-and-Drop Dashboard Builder will dramatically reduce the time it takes to configure dashboards.

9. & 10.  Preview for Microsoft Offfice 2007 files and Content Delivery for Microsoft 2007 files
Microsoft Office is the most widely used office productivity suite.  Prior to the Summer ‘10 release you could only preview files that were saved in the legacy Microsoft Office format (.doc, ppt).  The new format from for Office documents is xml based and uses an “x” on the file extension (.docx, .pptx).  This enhancement will make searching Salesforce Content and previewing files much easier.  You can also distribute the new file format using Salesforce Content Delivery.  The recipient of the file will be able to view the content without downloading an attachment. 

So what is missing from the Salesforce Summer ‘10 release?

Salesforce Mobile for Android support!  (They say it is coming soon.)