Spring ’18

Spring ‘18 is coming to a sandbox near you and that means the release notes are out! The PDF is 439 pages this time around, and it felt like Salesforce was adding a bunch of lesser used features and minor enhancements to bring Lightning up to feature parity with Classic. That being said, there are still many exciting new additions and here are my top 10 favorites!

List Class adding contains() and indexOf() methods

For too long, I’ve been putting all my list items into a set for the sole purpose of running a .contains() on it. Excited to see this option is coming to List as well!

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_apex_new_classes_methods.htm

No more ENTERING_MANAGED_PKG for Debug Logs!

Few things annoy me more than losing debug log space for running managed package code that I can’t see or edit anyway. Hopefully this will make solving apex issues simpler!

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_forcecom_debugging_log_levels.htm

Custom Themes and Branding

Was very excited to see this discussed at Dreamforce. Every company has a unique usage for Salesforce and it is great to see that Salesforce is allowing the uniqueness to expand to the color scheme of the org itself.

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_lightning_themes.htm

Salesforce Surveys

Excited to see that Salesforce has added a standard Survey component! Interesting possibilities with this one to gain insights from internal users and communities.

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_general_surveys.htm

Time Field is now in Public Beta

As someone who works with a time reservation app, I love that this feature is publicly available. I am especially excited about the formula fields that come with this as well.

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_forcecom_field_time_type_public_beta.htm

Related Fields and Other Objects in Component Visibility

At Dreamforce, I found out about the capability of dynamic Lightning component visibility. Very encouraged to see that this has been extended to related fields and objects as well! This allows for additional flexibility on Lightning pages.

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_forcecom_lab_field_traversal_in_rules.htm

Force.com is now the Lightning Platform

This is more of a semantic thing than anything and while maybe not one of my favorite changes, I’m hoping that this helps introduce some consistency in Salesforce’s naming conventions. I’ve only been working with the platform for a couple years but in that time, I’ve heard the platform referred to as the Force.com Platform, the Salesforce1 Platform, the Salesforce Platform, and probably another name or two that I’m forgetting. Hopefully this name sticks!

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_general_force_dot_com_rebrand.htm

Collapsible Sections on Lightning Pages

One of my favorite features on large page layouts now comes to Lightning pages to collapse various components! Should make pages easier to read.

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_forcecom_lab_comp_accordion.htm

Validation Rules can use Custom Metadata (Pilot)

While just a pilot for now, I’m glad to see that the line between Standard and Custom metadata is shrinking!

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_forcecom_development_custom_metadata_validation_rule_formula.htm

Lead Conversion Configurability

Every company has a slightly different lead conversion process, so any additional option to customize that process is a welcome addition to me! This might even make Bill Lumbergh smile.

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_sales_features_core_leads_conversion_oppty_config.htm

New URL Format in Lightning Experience

With just one example in the Release notes, it’s hard to tell exactly how helpful this will actually be but I’m hoping it will make ALL URLs in Lightning more readable. I was able to create a record in a pre-release org and ended up with this URL https://gs0.lightning.force.com/lightning/r/Hockey_Player__c/a01B0000002AEofIAG/view for my custom Hockey_Player__c object with ID a01B0000002AEofIAG

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_general_enhanced_urls_cruc.htm

Current format: https://lightning.domain.com/one/one.app/#/sObject/Account/home

New format: https://lightning.domain.com/lightning/o/Account/home

Those are my favorites from Spring ’18, let me know if you have any others!