Hello Ohana!! We are back with the highlights of the winter’20 release. Let’s see what are the new features Salesforce is rolling out in order to make the platform more efficient and make our work easy!! 🙂 Let’s get started…

Development:

1. Lightning web components open source:  

The Lightning Web Components framework is now open source, empowering you to explore the source code, customize the framework to your needs, and build enterprise-ready web components on any platform, not just Salesforce.

The benefits are significant. You can now learn one framework instead of several. You can share code between apps. And you’re using a cutting-edge framework built on web standards and based on the latest patterns and best practices.

You can also develop on LWC off-platform: see here.

2.  Add Lightning Web Components as Tabs:

This change applies to Lightning web components in Lightning Experience and all versions of the Salesforce app.

In order to add a lightning web component in a custom tab, define the <lightning_tab> in the <component>.js-meta.xml configuration file .

Create a custom tab for this component and add it to your App Launcher.

3. Communicate Across Salesforce UI Technologies with Lightning Message Service :

You can now use the Lightning Message Service API to communicate across the DOM, between Aura components, Visualforce pages, and Lightning web components.

In Lightning Experience, you often have multiple components on a page. Previously, if you wanted a Visualforce page to communicate with a Lightning web component in Lightning Experience, you needed to implement a custom publish-subscribe solution. Now, you can use the Lightning Message Service API to handle that communication.

4. Launch into Lightning Experience Apps with the Mobile App Launcher:

The App Launcher has landed on mobile. You can switch between all your favorite Lightning apps, just like in Lightning Experience desktop.

This change applies to the new Salesforce mobile app for iOS and Android in all editions, except Database.com.

This change is generally available to users with the New Salesforce Mobile App user permission.

Previously, to use all the cool features that are available in Lightning apps, you needed to be on a desktop computer. Now you can access Lightning apps from anywhere.

5. Navigate Users directly to an App:

Develop Lightning web components and Aura components that navigate users to a specific page in an app.

Now you can create components that link directly to your app and to a specific page in your app.

Use the lightning-navigation Lightning web component or the lightning:navigation Aura component with the new standard__app page reference type.

Lightning Flows:

1. Start a Flow on a Schedule:

Now you can schedule an autolaunched flow to start on a particular date and time and set the frequency to once, daily, or weekly. If you want that scheduled flow to run only for a set of records, you can specify an object and filter.

To start a flow for a set of records, select the filter conditions in the Start element. When your flow starts, a flow interview runs for each record that matches your filter—no looping required. The matching record is stored in the $Record global variable, so you can reference the variable or its fields throughout your flow.

To check whether a scheduled flow exceeds the org limit, check the debug logs to see the number of records that the flow runs on. The number of records equals the number of scheduled flow executions, because a flow runs for each record. Track the number of records with the new FLOW_START_SCHEDULED_RECORDS debug log line. If the flow exceeds the org limit, Salesforce sends an error email to either the admin who last modified the associated flow or the Apex exception email recipients.

Fig: On the Flow Builder canvas, a flow shows its scheduled start time.

Salesforce CLI: New and Changed Commands: 

1. Discover New and Changed CLI Commands:

New Parameters have been added in the Salesforcedx pre-release version 47.

Query in Bulk API 2.0 :

Bulk API 2.0 now supports bulk query jobs. These jobs enable asynchronous processing of SOQL queries and are designed to handle queries that return large amounts of data (10,000 records or more).

The Bulk API 2.0 implementation has several advantages:

• It does not require you to handle batches. All results are returned in one set.
• Limits have been simplified and are available to clients via a /limits endpoint.
• This implementation is better integrated with other Salesforce REST APIs:
  • It does not require a special X-SFDC-Session header.
  • It supports all the regular OAuth workflows.
  • Its design is more consistent with the other Salesforce APIs.

Protect Your Salesforce App with Enhanced Mobile Security:

Previously, customers with high security and compliance needs had to rely on external mobile device management (MDM) solutions to use the app.

But now with winter’20 release Mobile application management (MAM) has come to the new Salesforce mobile app. Secure your app with the convenient, highly customizable protection of enhanced Mobile Security.

Mobile Security keeps Salesforce app data safe and users’ personal data personal. You can control a range of policies to create a security solution tailored to your org’s needs. You can limit user access based on operating system versions, app versions, and device and network security. You can also specify the severity of a violation.

Generally Available Updates:

1. Make Your List Views Stay on Topic with Topic Filters:

Keep your list views #organized by adding filters based on topics. You can add filters for up to two topics per list view.

2. Save Ink and Paper with Printable View for Lists:

You don’t have to print your entire screen just to make a hard copy of your list. Generate a condensed, minimalist, ink-saving view of your lists and related lists with Printable View.

Just select Printable View from a list.

The columns and fields shown on the printable view reflect your page layout or related list preferences.

3. Complete Tasks in a Single Click:

4. Find Email File Attachments in One Click: 

Now it’s easy to send files as an email attachment. When reps choose files to attach to an email, they can use the new Related Files link. Click the link to show all the files that are part of the record. This feature applies to all activity-enabled objects, such as leads, contacts, person accounts, opportunities, cases, and custom objects.

When selecting a file to attach to an email, click Related Files. Select the files to attach, and then click Add.

5. Scan and Scroll the Activity Timeline:

Improvements to the activity timeline make scanning, finding, and acting on activities easier for your sales reps. Infinite scrolling eliminates clicks and eases scanning for the activity that a rep is looking for.

No more Load More Activities button. Grouping activities in the activity timeline by month lets reps find activities quickly and make sense of periods of time without customer activity. Relative dates, for example, one, two, or three months ago, let reps see the pace of activities.

6. Track Setup Changes Made to Connected App Policies and Settings:

The Setup Audit Trail now tracks some connected app policy and setting updates. For example, if your org has multiple admins, you can see who updated a connected app’s callback URL or access permissions.

These were few of the release highlights from the Winter’20 release. For a full fledge list of updates do refer the Winter’20 release notes.

That’s all for now…

Stay Updated and keep on Trailblazing!!