Who has time to read the 584 Pages Official Notes so if you are like me and want to focus on main highlights, then let’s get started:
1) You Can Create Pinned Page and Regions: Where you navigate to sub-tab
in your lightning console apps, a pinned region will remain displayed on the screen. There are three new templates which are available for lighting console apps to make you work more easily.
- Pinned region templates are available only for record pages. If you want to create a pinned region page, these three templates will change your life:
- Console: Pinned Header
- Console: Pinned Header and Left Sidebar
- Console: Pinned left Sidebar
- To add components to the pinned region you can do it by dragging whatever you want to the page.
Note: – You will see a Pin icon if a Region can be pinned.
2) Uploading Files Directly From a Flow: You can upload files from a flow by adding the forced content:fileUpload Lightning component to your flow screen. This change can apply to Lightning Experience and Salesforce mobile web. However, it only works for the Lightning flow runtime.
3) The Accordion Component: How would it be if I say that you can group components into accordion sections?
Well, that’s a big change, and now you can manage screen clutter more effectively. This new accordion component is same as the tab component, but it is collapsible. You can use the Accordion component on all record pages. This is the new features of Lightning Experience. You can have up to 25 sections, but I will recommend not to go any further than 10-12 sections. And Wait! You can also attach multiple components in each section, with their own headings.
4) Visibility Rules are More Visible: Earlier you were only limited to record pages for setting visibility conditions for components. Now, It’s available on Home page and Lightning App too!
Because App and Home pages are not associated with an object, The filters you can use are limited to another context, such as User or Client. But that doesn’t mean that they are not powerful. Let me give you an Example, You can use a filter to display one component to the users who belong to India whereas you can display something else to people who belong to the U.S. so this opens a whole big door for your creativity.
5) Component Visibility Rules got Related Fields and Other Objects: Before this release of Spring ’18, you were limited to define Component visibility rules on lightning record pages based on the fields directly on the record. But now you can create filters that are much stronger.
For example: on the record pages you can select a field from the record just by clicking Record Field. Or if you want to expand your field sections to related fields, related objects, or fields from other objects such as Client and User, you can do so by the clicking on the advanced option.
6) Add a Knowledge Base to your App: just If enable the Lightning Knowledge in your setup flow, then you can add knowledge to the item menu using the App Manager in setup.
7) Quick Text will save you time: with this new feature, you can add predefined messages, like greetings, notes, and answers to the common questions. You can also use quick text on all standard and custom objects in the following supported quick actions: Email, Log a Call, Social, and Live Agent chats. Previously, the Quick text was only available in Salesforce Classic. Now in lightning experience, the Quick text is enabled by default.
8) Mass Quick Actions in Lightning Experience: you can now perform mass quick actions up-to 200 items in a list view for Cases, Leads, and Custom Objects. Not only you will love this feature because keeping clean data just got much easier but also it saves your time.
- Agents can create or update multiple records from a list view to perform their daily functions such as updating case comments or updating case status.
- Mass quick actions are available only in the Lightning experience for standard and console navigation apps.
- If you want to enable your agents to use mass quick actions, go to the Search layout for the appropriate object and edit the List View Search Layout.
- For example, you have created a quick action Updated Lead in the Lead object.
- Now while using the list view you can now choose the above quick action to update the lead records:
9) Additional Features for Email: Reply, Reply All, and the Forward button is now available in the Case Feed, Email Message record home, and Case Email Related List.
To enable this Go to Page Layout Editor and select the Edit Email Message Layout and order the items from the Mobile and Lightning Actions selection
10) Cross Filters can filter across Objects: You can now include or exclude records in your report results, which are based on the related objects and their fields.
For Example, If Set the cross filter to show accounts with cases that have status equals escalated. It will show which account has escalated cases.
11) Customization is a new era: We never had the ability to customize the look and feel in Salesforce but with the release of spring ’18 the new era begins.
You can now customize the colors of your Lightning Application completely.
It don’t only finishes at colors, but you can also change…
- Brand image
- Brand colors
- Page background image
- Default Avatar image
- Salesforce have make it clear in their release notes that this is just the start, they have plan to add more customization in the future. I cannot wait for it!
12) Reduce Data Redundancy with Automation: Salesforce now added the ability to clean your data in batch jobs. You can now use standards and custom de-duplication rules to maximum possible advantage and schedule them up to run in batches. When these rules run and find matches, they’ll automatically merge the records for you. This will work out Leads, Contacts, Accounts or Personal Accounts. Earlier Admins have to do this manually or with some tools like Demand tool, but you can automate. This was a huge Improvement and a big congratulations to the Salesforce team for the awesome work.
13) Privacy Data Preference: With the privacy laws like General Data Protection Regulation (GDRP) passed by the EU, you are now responsible for the fulfillment of your customer’s wishes about you can store about them. Keeping this in mind, Salesforce Team created a new individual object that hangs off to Leads and Contacts.
For example, one of your contacts asks you to delete all his/her personal data, then after deleting that data, you can reflect this requirement in their individual record. There are some standard fields on the individual object for the main compliance needs like Collecting, Storing, and sharing personal data or deleting records and personal data but you can also add custom fields to add your own policies. It is a really cool concept and I can see a lot of potential in this to expand it. Who Knows what the Future Requirements about the Privacy Data may be, so this feature marks a good start.
14) Improvements in Person Account: There are a lot of improvements in Personal Accounts, You can now email to Person Accounts using th same send email functionality as you can in Contacts and Leads, Also Person Account can now sync to both Outlook and Google Contacts. (To get this work you need to use the Lightning Sync.) and Finally, if you use Assets with your Person Accounts, you can now view them from the Person Account record in Lightning.
15) Opportunity Team Update: This is a simple but very effective new feature. Now, from the opportunity teams, users have the options to set the Opportunity team to match the Account team with a single click.
16) Search – Redesigned: Now you can find for Folders in search, In addition to this, email messages are searchable and some other objects like Individual and Surveys are also indexed.
17) Two Major Campaign Updates: Earlier you have to leave the campaign record to add leads and contacts in the campaigns but now, it is possible right from the campaigns itself. You’re now able to search and add multiple Leads and Contacts at a time. The Second big update with campaigns is that now you can show the progression of a Campaign across its status or on any other picklist field just by setting up the path.
18) Lightning just got the Classic Features: Here are some Classic Features which are now available in Lightning Release after Spring 18 Opportunity Splits- Splits are now supported and it comes with a slick widget to add the splits.
- Opportunity Contact Roles- Now we are getting much-improved Contact Roles page on Opportunity to update Contact Roles. You can also set the Primary Contact as well.
- Report Builder – As mentioned above, Bucket Columns, summary Fields and Filtering by Hierarchies are now all available in the Lightning Report Builder.
- Color your Dashboards- You can now add colors to your Dashboards. You can also do this previously in the classic, but the color options weren’t great. The Lightning options are now much broader.
Well the spring 18 was just awesome and we say a lot of improvements, and because you read till the end, I got you free access ticket to my webinar at
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