Another couple months, another Salesforce release! This time it’s Summer ‘18 and to avoid you having to read all 512 pages of the release notes (although there is some great stuff in there!) I’m going over my favorite features that are coming out. I had a hard time narrowing it down so decided to stick with my lucky number, 17!
Declarative
There’s a lot of great new functionality on the declarative side of things, specifically for the Lightning Experience. My favorite features focused on two areas; Reports & Dashboards and Process Builder/Flow.
Reports & Dashboards
Link Dashboard Components
My first top feature from this release is that you can now link dashboard components to either elsewhere internal to Salesforce or somewhere external! I see a lot of potential here in making it faster to act on data you see in dashboards
Add to Dashboard from Report
I’ve never been a fan of how many steps it takes to start building a dashboard after just spending time building a report. That’s all over with the “Add to Dashboard from Report” functionality in Summer ‘18! Now you can add a report to an existing dashboard or start a new dashboard directly from the report itself!
Report and Dashboard Subfolders
I like to stay organized and as a result, am the type of person who has folders on folders on folders on my computer. Now I can bring that organization to Salesforce as well with the ability to create subfolders for reports or dashboard folders!
Filter on Old and New Values in Field History Reports
My last favorite new feature on Reports and Dashboards is the ability to properly report on field history by being able to filter on old and new values. This should make it much easier to determine when records changed and why!
Process Builder and Flow
Guided Action List Component
This may only kind of be a feature for flow but the new Guided Action List component based on flows should be tremendously helpful in walking support reps through a given process. While probably most applicable for service agents, I can see how this component could potentially get used for other processes as well.
Flow Debug Capability
This has been a long time coming, the ability to fully debug Flows! Flows now have a Debug option to walk you through the flow with all of its variable values.
Process Builder Helpful Error Messages
In addition to being able to debug flows, Process Builder now has actually helpful error messages! Looking forward to reduced frustration when trying to figure out why one of these isn’t working properly (not that it wouldn’t work on the first try of course 😉 )
Process and Flow Limit Information
Not a very flashy change, but another one that will help with troubleshooting. Processes and Flows will now show additional info on how close they are to hitting governor limits. Kudos to Salesforce to continually making these easier to troubleshoot!
Partial Save Process Builder Mass Create and Update
My final favorite Process and Flow feature is the capability to allow for partial save of records. This capability comes in very handy all the time with Apex and now Processes will benefit from it as well! If one of your 500 updated records fail due to a validation error, you will now still have 499 successes instead of 0 previously!
Coding
2.5X Debug Log Size Limit
This one may be one of my favorite updates all time in Salesforce releases. The Debug Log size limit has more than doubled from 2MB to 5MB! I’ve spent far too much time messing with debug log settings to get the levels I want to be able to get the necessary output while staying under the limit, (hopefully) no more!
Lightning Pages work with broken Components
Another much needed feature/bug fix, Lightning Pages will no longer completely fail if one of the components is broken! Instead, just the component will fail to properly render. It’s too bad this wasn’t the case when I was troubleshooting the Trailhead Lightning Component Superbadge but better late than never!
Apex Switch Statement
A long asked for addition to Apex, the Switch statement is finally here! It should make those long if/else blocks MUCH simpler! Check out the switch statement in action from TrailheaDX!
Run Apex Tests without Code Coverage
I’m all for almost ANYTHING that will make my tests run faster. Apex now lets you opt out of calculating code coverage while tests are running to increase performance. This is one of those features that I didn’t know I needed but now I can’t understand how I ever lived without!
Metadata Dependency API
This is just a Pilot but looked AMAZING when demoed at TrailheaDX, the Metadata Dependency API! It’s primary use is figuring out what components are necessary to be able to spin up scratch orgs properly but I’m hoping I’ll be able to use it to figure out what related components are needed for deployments and deletions as well!
Instance Names Removed from Sandbox URLs
This last one tends to bug me as someone who has to end up hardcoding instance names for Communities and other pages and then change then whenever a sandbox gets refreshed but finally the instance name is being removed from URLs in sandboxes!
Einstein
Einstein Service Bots
My last section of updates I’m most excited about deals with Einstein. For years I’ve been hearing about bots and this is one of the first ones I’ve seen that is configurable declaratively! Einstein Service Bots are here for orgs with Live-Agent! Salesforce even put together a nice video on it!
Einstein Next Best Action
My last favorite feature is another Pilot but one that I’m very excited about due to its potential. It’s the Einstein Next Best Action capability. I’m guessing that there may be some initial kinks to work out, but the idea that Einstein can suggest to a user what action they should take is one of the big ideas that AI is striving towards! I’m hopeful it catches on!
Hopefully this gave you a nice taste of what Summer ‘18 has to offer, Coming Soon to an Org near you! Let me know if you agree/disagree and if I missed anything! Be sure to check out the Summer ’18 badge on Trailhead and make sure you’re #Ready4Summer18
Adam To Architect 