Summer ’08 Release Notes
Steve twittered today that the Summer ’08 Release Notes were published. More so than the Summer ’08 Ideas, the Release Notes provide exactly what’s happening in the next release leaving very little to the imagination.
(UPDATE: The Summer 08 Landing Page was published).
I suggest you check it out. Some new functionality that I find particularly intriguing:
Visualforce is Generally Available
Visualforce is now available for all organizations in Group, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions.
This is huge. There is A LOT to learn in this area.
Analytic Snapshots
Analytic snapshots enable users to run a tabular report and save the report results to fields on a custom object … and schedule when to run the report to load the custom object’s fields with the report’s data.
It sounds kind of like exporting the data to Excel, but will instead let you export it to a custom object. This is cool because you can then report on data “at a point in time”.
MultiDay Events
Users can now create events that end more than one day (24 hours) after they start, lasting up to 14 days.
This is a new convenience for end users. Hopefully it syncs well with Outlook calendar.
Enhanced List Views
Inline Editing
If your administrator has enabled inline editing for your organization, you can now edit single records directly from a list view by double-clicking on individual field values. If your administrator has granted you the “Mass Inline Edit from Lists” user profile permission, you can also edit up to 200 records at a time with inline editing.
Custom Paging
You can now change the number of records displayed per page of list results by clicking the record count indicator in the lower left corner of the list and selecting the desired setting.
Drag-and-Drop Customization
You can now change the order in which a column is displayed by dragging the entire column heading with your mouse to the desired position.
Customizable User Object
Finally, we can have page layouts, set field level security and more on the User object.
Cross-Object Formulas
Refer to fields on related objects in your formulas. Even use the formulas to display fields from related objects right on the UI. For example, put the Account Number field on the Opportunity page.
Apex Enhancements
Lots of stuff here. Read the release notes for details.
Many-to-Many Object Relationships
In Summer ’08, you can now create two master-detail relationships on a single junction object to make it easier to represent a many-to-many relationship in your data model.
This will help in development. These junction objects have always been tricky from a user experience standpoint.
Lots of things to digest here. I only captured a handful of things that stood out to me personally. Go see for yourself.
David S Said,
May 6, 2008 @ 6:14 pm
Great list. One significant addition: The Salesforce Mobile enhancements look like a complete overhaul of the application.
Salesforce.com – Updating Data En Masse | Force Collective Said,
June 13, 2012 @ 10:45 am
[…] While not limited to end users, this is one of the best ways to update a lot of data at once. This is a good option when your data set is in the single digits, tens or even hundreds. To do this, just go to a list view, select multiple records that you would like to edit, double click the field that you would like to edit, and you will receive the option to make a change to only the current record you are editing, or all of the records you have selected. Click “Save” and voilà ! To give some perspective on when this was released, Salesforce MVP Scott Hemmeter wrote about this in Summer of 08. […]