Readying for a New Salesforce.com Release

Salesforce’s Spring 12 release is upon us.  Are you ready?  Here are a few quick thoughts for getting the most out of one of the three new releases from Salesforce each year.

Spring 12 ReleaseIn the months and weeks prior to the new release, consider signing up for pre-release org, to try out new features.  They’re free and you can find them on developer.force.com.

Knowing when the release will go live in your org is a good thing.  This is especially true in those cases when features are activated during the release by default.  (Chatter, anyone?)  Typically Salesforce spreads out new release rollouts over two consecutive weekends.  As I type this, about 1/3 of the servers worldwide have now been upgraded to Spring 12, and the rest, like our own, will not be until next weekend.  You can find details of the next release’s schedule in the Release Maintenance Window section of trust.salesforce.com’s System Status page.

Each release has a website with videos, full release notes, and other resources in a one-stop location for your benefit.  Prior to the upgrade of your system, you can find release overview at http://www.salesforce.com/customer-resources/releases/spring12/ (simply swap out the name of the particular release for “spring12”).  Once your system has been upgraded, a “Discover Spring ’12” button appears on the righthand side of your Home Tab, once logged in to your system which takes you to the same place.

Salesforce’s constant innovation through three annual releases definitely keep us on our toes.  I find that stepping through the Release Notes in a Developer Org and trying out each new feature is a must for getting the most out of each new release.  Don’t shy away from flipping through Spring 12’s 182 pages of Release Notes!

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February 6, 2012

David Carnes - Founder & CEO

about the author

David Carnes

David’s role as Chairman & Chief Digital Evangelist is centered around driving meaningful client engagement and business development. The key to this is serving as an advisor to OpFocus’ SaaS clients as they scale their revenue operations and embrace digital transformation.

In his early career, David worked in IT and operations for software companies, developing an interest in CRM, marketing automation, and analytics while building out systems, processes, data, and reporting for the business teams he supported. He earned a Masters in Software Engineering and credits a Harvard summer class in database management for opening his eyes to what systems could do to support operations. In founding OpFocus in 2006 David took another step toward focusing on business operations, seizing on Salesforce’s vision and never looking back.

David is a frequent speaker at Salesforce and Salesforce community events around the world, mentors through the Trailblazer Mentorship Program hosts Dashboard Dōjō, and serves as a Platform Champion and a Pi-TaP board member. Due to his involvement in the trailblazer community, David’s recently been awarded the position of Salesforce MVP!