Salesforce Winter 18: Winter is Here

Hello Everyone. Winter is coming (or is already here?) so does the Salesforce release. Salesforce recently release Winter 18 with lots of feature related to Lightning, Einstein and many other points.

Today we will take a quick look on some of the major points of release notes which might help us in our next development.

1. The Lightning Experience Readiness Check Got a Promotion

Salesforce expanded the role for the Lightning Experience Readiness Sales Cloud customers get predictions on how Lightning Experience can impact user productivity. Predictions are based on your current Salesforce usage and the average return on investment anonymously reported by other Salesforce customers.

2. Encrypt More of Customers’ Personally Identifying Information

Protect more of the personally identifiable information (PII) in standard fields on accounts, contacts, and lead. Such as Address (Street, City)

• Company
• Description
• Email
• Fax
• Mobile Phone
• Name (First Name, Middle Name, Last Name)
• Phone
• Title
• Website

3. Integrate Salesforce with Skype

Now we can Integrate Salesforce with Skype for Business, Cisco Spark. So now we can send instant Skype message to our teammates without leaving Salesforce. For this we need Microsoft 365 account.

4. Salesforce Chatter: A New Way to Work with Windows 10

Version 1.0 of Salesforce Chatter is generally available from the Windows Store. This app gives Windows 10 Anniversary Edition users a new, easy to use way to access Chatter and collaborate with coworkers.

Salesforce Chatter gives you an installable app for collaborating with coworkers over Chatter. You can access Chatter feeds and posting functionality with the power of a downloadable app.

5. Now we can explore Salesforce Dx using the trailhead module Get started with Salesforce Dx

6. Build Exciting User Interfaces with New Base Lightning Components

Accelerate your development with a fresh medley of 30 new built-in Lightning components. The new components cover a broad range of user interface elements and give you a whole new toolbag for your development. Salesforce is  working to reach parity with the Lightning Design System components, and this release brings us closer to that goal. Here’s a visual summary of what Salesforce has in store for us.

7. Component Code Validation Occurs Automatically When You Save

Lightning component JavaScript code is validated when you save it. Validation ensures that your components are written using best practices and avoid common pitfalls that can make them incompatible with LockerService. Validation happens automatically when you save Lightning component resources in the Developer Console, in your favorite IDE, and via API.

Validation failures are treated as errors and block changes from being saved. Error messages explain the failures. Depending on the tool you’re using, these errors are presented in different ways. For example, the Developer Console shows an alert for the first error it encounters and lists all of the validation errors discovered in the Problems tab .

8. Use Apex Services in lightning:container (Generally Available)

The Lightning container component allows you to specify the Content Security Policy (CSP) of your iframed content. Previously, you could set a CSP of minimum, Lightning, or custom, with a default of Lightning. Now you can set a CSP level of low, high, or custom, with a default of low. This change applies to Lightning Experience only.

The Lightning container component allows you to use third-party frameworks in an iframe within a Lightning page. A CSP level of high allows frame ancestors only from the Lightning domain, while a CSP level of low allows content from other origins. A CSP level of custom allows you to define your own CSP header. With a CSP level of low, you can access the Streaming API and call Apex methods from within a Lightning container component.

9. Use Lightning Data Service to Perform Record Operations Without Apex Code (Generally Available)

Use Lightning Data Service to load, create, edit, or delete a record in your component, without using Apex code. Lightning Data Service improves performance and data consistency across your components.

Lightning Data Service (LDS) is the Lightning Components counterpart to the Visualforce standard controller, providing access to the data displayed on a page. Without LDS, each component within an app makes independent server calls to perform CRUD operations on a record, even if all the components app pull from the same record data. Each redundant server call reduces performance and potentially leads to inconsistencies, creating situations where a server call refreshes one component, leaving the other components out  of date.

LDS identifies and eliminates requests that involve the same record data, sending a single shared data request that updates all relevant components. Not only does this eliminate situations where components can have inconsistent data, but it also acts as a publisher hub that notifies components of data changes. LDS supports custom objects and most of custom objects.

10. Client Payload Data Limit Increased to 4 MB in Lightning.

The framework batches server-side actions in the queue into one server request. The request payload includes all of the actions and their data serialized into JSON. The request payload limit has been increased to 4 MB. Previously, it was 1 MB. Use action.setParams() in JavaScript to set data for an action to be passed to a server-side controller.

11. There are 30 new Lightning Components which you can use. For eg: force:omniToolkitAPI (Beta), lightning:accordion, lightning:buttonIconStateful, lightning:clickToDial, lightning:combobox (Beta), lightning:datatable, lightning:dualListbox, lightning:fileCard, lightning:fileUpload (Beta), lightning:notificationsLibrary, lightning:progressBar, lightning:progressIndicator, lightning:verticalNavigation, lightning:treeand many other component. So now we have rich set of library of components which we can use as per our need.

12. Automatically Style Existing Visualforce Pages with Lightning Experience Stylesheets (Beta)

Easily control whether a page is styled with the look of Lightning Experience when viewed in Lightning Experience or the Salesforce1 app with the lightningStylesheets attribute. Previously, restyling a page for Lightning Experience involved searching the SLDS reference site for matching components and altering your code. The new attribute gives unstyled Visualforce pages the Lightning Experience look automatically. This feature is available in Lightning Experience and all versions of the Salesforce1 mobile app.

[code]

<apex:page lightningStylesheets="true">

[/code]

13. Get Your Pages Ready for Lightning Experience

Want to know if the Visualforce pages in your org are ready for Lightning Experience? Use the Lightning Experience Visualforce check to generate a report that flags pages that need changes before they’re ready for prime time in Lightning Experience. This change applies to Lightning Experience only.

Run the Lightning Experience Visualforce Report directly from your Lightning Readiness Report PDF. The Visualforce Report looks at all pages in your org used in the past 90 days, and identifies features that aren’t available in Lightning Experience.

14. JavaScript Remoting Request Data Limit Increased to 4 MB

The request payload limit has been increased to 4 MB. Previously, it was 1 MB.

15. Run Parallel Tests Using a New Option on the @isTest Annotation

Use the @isTest(isParallel=true) annotation to indicate test classes that can run

in parallel and aren’t restricted by the default limits on the number of concurrent tests. This makes the execution of test classes more efficient, because more tests can be run in parallel

16. Deployments Now Recompile of All Apex Code

All of an org’s Apex code is now recompiled automatically before completing a metadata deploy, change set, a package install, or a package upgrade (including push upgrades).

17. Build Your ISV Business Faster with the AppExchange Trailblazer Checklist

Stay organized as you build your ISV business with the AppExchange Trailblazer Checklist. The checklist divides your partner journey into 10 steps, starting with guided learning on Trailhead and ending with a published listing on AppExchange. Each step is paired with new supporting content in the Partner Community. You asked to see the entire partner journey at a glance, so we made the checklist easy to skim and navigate with short summaries.

When you’re ready for more details, jump to new Partner Community pages.

18. SOSL

Salesforce Object Search Language (SOSL) includes new support for searching through list views. Search Within a List View. USING ListView lets you search through an object’s list view, making it easier to look through a large list view for a single record.

The following SOSL statement searches through the MVP Customers list view for the Account object for Acme.

[code]

FIND {Acme} IN ALL FIELDS RETURNING Account(Id, Name USING ListView=MVPCustomers)

[/code]

19. User Interface API (Generally Available)

Build Salesforce UI for native mobile apps and custom web apps using the same API that Salesforce uses to build Salesforce1 and Lightning Experience. Not only do you get data and metadata in a single response, but the response matches metadata changes made to the org by Salesforce admins.

You don’t have to worry about layouts, picklists, field-level security, or sharing—all you have to do is build an app that users love.

20. Query Millions of Records with Async SOQL (Generally Available)

Async SOQL is a method for running SOQL queries in the background over Salesforce entity data. Use the Async SOQL API to run queries on big, standard, and custom objects. It provides the optimal way to process large amounts of data stored in Salesforce big objects. With the introduction of custom big objects, it’s possible to keep billions of records on the platform. To help you work at this new scale, Salesforce has developed Async SOQL to handle queries on huge amounts of data.

These are few points from my quick read of release notes. You can also signup for a pre-release org and can play with them yourself here.

What did you like most in this release let me know in comments section.

Happy Programming 🙂