As a Salesforce Admin working in Salesforce Classic, you may be feeling a bit left behind this release with many exciting new features being released in Lightning only. But fear not as Salesforce is serving up three key treats for their point-and-click admins in its Winter ‘17 release.
1. Process Builder
Have you ever wanted to create a process builder based on a record’s owner? Well now you can—Salesforce has delivered an updated Process Builder with access to more owner fields.
- Access to fields such as the email or name of a case’s owner. Previously you could only reference OwnerId on Cases.
- On other objects such as Opportunities, you can now access custom fields on the Owner’s User record.
Salesforce is also introducing Reusable Processes. What does that mean for you? Now you can...
- Create a process that invokes another process. One caveat here, you can only invoke processes with objects that share at least one unique ID. See the Salesforce Winter '17 Release Notes for more details and examples.
- Reuse sections of your processes.
- Build one invocable process, call it from multiple processes or from multiple action groups in the same process.
2. Global Picklists
Global Picklists are now generally available! This feature is a win-win as it not only saves you time, but also improves your data quality.
- Share values across custom picklist fields and objects.
- And your data will stay clean because Global Picklists are restricted. (New values can’t be added through the API.)
This release also brings updates to the Picklist Fields using Global Picklist Value Sets. Previously, picklist fields using the global picklist value sets had some limitations. With this release, they will function more like regular picklist fields. You can now:
- Convert from multi-select to single select.
- Replace values.
- Use in picklist dependencies.
- Make required.
3. More Spanning Relationships
Have you ever gotten this error message?
You have reached the maximum number of 10 object references in ObjectName
If so, you're in luck, because Salesforce has increased the limit from 10 to 15 on the number of Spanning Relationships per object in Formulas.
What is a Spanning Relationship?
- A Spanning Relationship is created when you use create a formula on one object that references fields on another object.
A formula could be a…
- Formula Field
- Workflow Field Update
- Validation Rule
- Approval processes
- Assignment rules
- Escalation rules
- Auto-response rules
Create any combination of these formulas referencing unique objects, adding up to a total of 15.
And why do you want more Spanning Relationships? Providing information from one object on another object….
- Allows users to work more efficiently.
- Allows you to make more effective reports.
Check out all of the updates coming in Winter '17 in the release notes. And stay tuned to our blog for more helpful tips and highlights!
