My Three Favorite Features in Summer ’16

The Summer ‘16 Release of Salesforce is here and while this is a lighter release, it brings some great enhancements to existing features.

Don’t forget! It is important to always check the release notes for the full list of features. Here are my three favorite enhancements coming out in this release.

1. Attach Contacts to Multiple Accounts

This is the update I am the most excited about in Summer ‘16. In each release some of the features come from the Success Community’s Ideas page, and this is one. Instead of needing to build custom Objects or Triggers to show how a person is related to more than one Account, Salesforce has now turned that into a native function with direct and indirect relationships.

As shown above, Account Name is still a required field on a Contact, but that Account is now considered a direct relationship. Any other Account associated to the Contact is described as an indirect relationship.

If you look at a Contact’s related lists, there is a new list called Related Accounts. There you can see not only the direct and indirect relationships the Contact has, but that person’s role with each Account.

On the Account record there are now two related lists that are available to users: Contacts and Related Contacts.

It’s important to note that Jon Snow, in our example above, only appears in the Related Contacts list for this Account, Winterfell, as he is not in a direct relationship. Ned Stark is in a direct relationship with Winterfell and is therefore present in both lists. So, if you wish to add this feature to your Salesforce org, I’d recommend only using the Related Contacts related list.

And as a bonus feature with this release, you now have the ability to merge Contacts through the Account page. Stay tuned for another blog post on the steps to do a Contact merge, and the best ways to manage your Contacts with multiple Accounts.

2. Process Builder Enhancements

The next exciting update comes with the Process Builder. Salesforce has listened to the Success Community who have clamored for a feature with the ability to stop or continue evaluating after each Process.

Photo credit:  Salesforce Summer ‘16 Release Notes 

Before, when creating a new Process, you were stuck at number 2 with only the option to stop a flow once the criteria has been met.

Now, when you look below, you can see on Step 3 you have the choice to either stop the flow once a piece of criteria has been met, or evaluate the next criteria.

Photo credit: Salesforce Summer ‘16 Release Notes

This brings a new level of functionality to the Process Builder. It gives the option to have more complex criteria than ever before and gives users more ways to use the Process Builder.

3. Clone Sandboxes and Increased Limits For All Editions

Anyone who has ever updated or added functionality to their Salesforce org should know the importance of Sandboxes. However, one frustration we run into in Sandboxes when doing larger development projects is having more than one developer working simultaneously. We need to ensure that their work doesn’t cause problems for one another.

To help ease this pain, we now have the ability to clone a Sandbox. Instead of developers taking the time to run their deployments into new Sandboxes, they can clone the Sandbox with the new features into a new Sandbox and get going right away.

Finally, Salesforce has increased the limits of Sandboxes each edition receives across the board. The limit increase means it is less likely to run out of testing environments for multiple projects going on at the same time. The new limits for each edition of Salesforce are below.

Photo credit: Salesforce Help & Training

The big add on to all of this is the Partial Copy Sandbox to Enterprise Editions and above. This will allow admins and developers, who are building a feature that will affect only a subset of Objects and records, to bring just the affected sample to the Sandbox. Partial Copy Sandboxes also have a much faster refresh time than the Full Sandboxes which bring over all of your data.

This doesn’t mean you should bypass a test in a Full Sandbox if you have it. But if you don’t want to shell out for an upgraded edition or for a Full Sandbox right now, this could solve some of your issues. To learn more about Sandboxes check out Salesforce’s Help and Training page.

Wrap Up

All in all this update has brought along some great functionality. The ability to merge Contacts and attach them to multiple Accounts can be a game changer for many organizations. The new updates to Process Builder makes it easier to create functional processes. Finally, the updates to Sandboxes makes it easier for admins to manage and test their updates, especially in organizations with a high volume of changes.

After you’ve had a chance to peruse the release notes, come back and let us know your favorite features of Summer ’16!