Spring’15 Chatter Goodies: The Chatter Updates from the Latest Salesforce Release

The Salesforce Spring’15 Release is about to hit boxes soon with more than 250 new and improved features, over 130 customer ideas, and a lot more to make every SFDC user happy! The Spring’15 Release like all Salesforce releases comes in extensively with over 300 page of documentation. So I thought to make Chatter lovers’ lives easy with pulling out these Chatter updates in Spring’15.

The Spring’15 Chatter Goodies

The new release allows you to connect anywhere, and on any device with your customers, partners and employees to build meaningful relations and engaging experiences. Spring ’15 updates Chatter in such a way that you can now report on Chatter activity in your organization, add records to groups, create cases from Chatter Questions, and benefit from many more functionality improvements to files, feeds, and unlisted groups. Here are the details of the Chatter updates for you:

Chatter Dashboards Package

The Salesforce Chatter Dashboards package provides admins a set of dashboards and reports to keep a hawk-eye on the whole Chatter activity. Below are the Dashboards available for admins to gain deeper insights on each and every activity:

• Overview Dashboard
• Content Dashboard
• Groups Dashboard
• Moderation Dashboard
• Q&A Dashboard
• Topics Dashboard
• User Profiles Dashboard

Availability: Available on AppExchange shortly after Spring’15.

Add Records to Chatter Groups

With this added feature, users can add records to groups to collaborate and discuss as a team on them in the group itself. This feature is enabled by default; the only requirement being the configuration of the Group Publisher.

Availability: Accessible in Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, Contact Manager, and Developer Editions

Added Options for Collaboration in Chatter Groups

Apart from adding records to Chatter Groups, there are some more options to collaborate:

• Email from non-unique email addresses is now supported in Chatter Groups
  Note: Supported only if they’re unique at the group level
• Unlisted groups can now be converted to public or private groups

Availability: Accessible in Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, Contact Manager, and Developer Editions

Chatter Question-to-Case

Image Credit: salesforce.com

• Manage all your Files and Content settings under a single Salesforce Files node
• Record Types and Page Layouts are now supported by Salesforce Files
• Salesforce Files Sync now supports Windows 8 and 8.1, and Mac OS X Yosemite
• Sync Shared Files directly from Chatter feed posts, file lists, and file detail pages
• A managed version of Salesforce Files Sync available in Pilot version lets IT admins to deploy Salesforce Files Sync desktop client at scale
• Integrate with Microsoft OneDrive for Business for file sharing
• Secure Agent Enhancements
• Enhancements in Spring ’15 will help you install, update, and track activity of Secure Agents

Availability: Most features accessible in Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions, for others, contact SFDC

Enhancements in Communication Options in Chatter Feeds

Chatter Feeds have enhanced to a great extent with allowing users to create tasks from a post to let them use emoticons. Have a look:

• Create New Task action lets users create a task directly from a post in their feed
• Create action links that integrate Salesforce and third-party services into the feed using Action Links which are now Generally Available
• Users can add different Smileys to posts and comments typing various character combinations (to enable, go to Chatter Customization settings and select Allow Emoticons)

Availability: Accessible in Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, Contact Manager, and Developer Editions

Manage Chatter Private Messages

Chatter Private Messages can be moderated with Apex Triggers, as the Chatter Message object now supports triggers. You can:

• Automate private message moderation in an organization or community
• Use triggers to customize messages that comply with the company’s guidelines and don’t contain blacklisted content
• Customize error messages that would be sent to the declined message senders

Availability: Accessible in Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

Chatter REST API Enhancements

Chatter REST API is used to integrate mobile apps, intranet sites, and third party Web applications with Communities and Chatter. Let’s have a look at some of its enhancements in this release:

• Third-Party and Salesforce Services can now be integrated into the feed with Action Links, and the feature is now Generally Available
• Action Link Templates can be created to Distribute Action Links in Apps
• Action Link Context Variables can be used to pass context information to server-side code
• Action Links which were available in Pilot are now Generally Available
• Bundled Posts with Aggregated Feed Tracked Changes is now accessible, and the feature is now Generally Available
• CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing) can now be used to access Salesforce Resources from JavaScript

Availability: Enabled for Admins and Developers

Chatter Apex Enhancements

Apex in Chatter is used to create custom Communities and Chatter experiences in Salesforce. With the latest Spring ’15 release, here are some enhancements made in Apex for Chatter:

• Third-Party and Salesforce Services can be integrated into the Feed with Action Links, and the feature is now Generally Available
• Action Link Templates can be created to Distribute Action Links in Apps
• Action Link Context Variables can be used to pass context information to server-side code
• The new action links classes, methods, and enums are listed in the sections – Action Links Classes, Action Links Input Classes, Action Links Output Classes, and New and Changed Chatter in Apex Enums
• Bundled Posts with Aggregated Feed Tracked Changes is now accessible, and the feature is now Generally Available

Availability: Enabled for Admins and Developers

Want to make the most of all the latest SFDC updates?

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