Analytics Edition has been a bit of a ride.  Initially it was to be a paid add-on, pricing was rumored to be $50/per/month with the requirement all users in the org must be licensed.  Customer reaction (myself included) to this pricing was negative enough that it garnered press attention.  Salesforce responded by offering Analytics Edition for free.  Well done Salesforce for listening to and responding to your customer base.

Release schedule for Analytics Edition:

Sandboxes: Released 2/7/12

Production: Scheduled 2/12/12

My full sandbox has the new features as of 2/8/12 so let’s have a look!

Test 1

Success criteria: Create a joined report between leads and opportunities, and report on lead status/opportunity stage grouped.

I had an immediate business need to solve. I need to report leads and opportunities at the same time. Most opportunities in this org would be converted from leads, except those created during the data migration. This leaves a substantial gap in reporting that requires exporting two separate reports and an ugly mashup in Excel (or another 3rd party solution).

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For those of you that missed the Winter ‘10 webinar yesterday, here’s what you missed!  A recorded version should be available next week at http://developer.force.com.

New Platform Features

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With this release, Salesforce certified folk are only required to complete training.  No exam required! 

I believe this training is open to the public.  I was able to access it through this link, while logging in through one of my uncertified accounts. 

The Sales Cloud

Analytic Enhancements

• Charts
  • Greater control over labels and colors
  • Donut and Funnel chart types added
  • Not automatically enabled.  When enabled, you cannot return to the old charting engine.
• Dashboards
  • Brighter colors and additional colors added
  • Display actual amounts and percentages on graphs
    
• Analytic Snapshots
  • Can now be bundled in managed and unmanaged packages
  • Schedule and running user cannot be packaged and must be configured after package installation

Automated Campaigns

• Campaign Member
  • View/edit/delete/clone each record
  • Custom fields and page layout editor now available for campaign members (e.g. RSVP status, Food preference, etc.)
  • Workflow rules for campaign members (e.g. if RVSP “Yes” send email alert with agenda)
  • Use triggers for additional customization
  • Setup –> Customize –> Campaigns –> Campaign Members

List Views for Account and Sales Teams

• My Sales Teams is now a filter criteria for list views on accounts and opportunities (account teams must be enabled)
  
  

Recurring Tasks

• Can edit individual tasks, or the series
• Must have an end date
  • Provided button to calculate max end date (based upon number of tasks created)
• Recurrence icon on recurring tasks
  
• Turned on by default (but can be turned off)
• Outlook sync not supported for recurring tasks (planned for a future released)

Admin Enhancements

• Platform (Force.com Edition) profiles can now be given 10 existing CRM administrator permissions
• Delegated data administration now possible (View All and Modify All per object) on platform profiles
• Profile Setup Audit Trail logs changes to a profile, change author, and time of change
• When cloning a profile, Login Hours and Login IP Ranges are now cloned as well

Content Enhancements

• Content delivery now includes option for password protecting content
• Administrator can set default password (org wide) for content delivery
• Reporting for featured content and ratings
• Creation of content packs and the presentation assembly can now be disabled (org wide)

Mobile Enhancements

• Blackberry
  • Related list now on the detail page of a record
  • Clone existing records
  • Create links from Salesforce records to visualforce pages or web tabs
  • Improved Storm support
• iPhone
  • List view enhancements
  • Lead conversion support
  • Calendar style browser for events
  • Products and price book support

Sharing UI Enhancements

• Sharing administrator pages load faster
• Customized list views

The Service Cloud

Salesforce to Salesforce Cases and Case Comments

• Share records from one organization to another (Salesforce to Salesforce)
  • Supports cases, leads, opportunities, accounts, contacts, activities, products, opportunity products, and custom objects
• Near real time updates
• Includes reporting and workflow capabilities
• Records can be shared manually or through sharing rules

Advanced Customer Portal User Management

• Ability to disable customer and partner users (new buttons on contact record)
• Ability to disable and an entire account’s access to customer and partner portals (new buttons on account record)
• Portal users can now be transferred between accounts (will take on role of new account or create a role will be created if none exists)
• Portal users can now be merged

Advanced Case Workflow

• Workflow rules can now be created when comments are added to cases
  (notice that case is now selectable when creating a workflow rule on case comment)
  

The Custom Cloud

Force.com Sites

• Publish VisualForce pages to branded domains entirely through the force.com platform.
• Sites is now live!

Organization-Wide Email Addresses

• Generic from email address and name
• Specify which profiles can send from each org wide address
• When sending an email, users select the email from the “from” address
  • Can only be used when sending a single email (no mass email support, no workflow rules support!)
  • Email address must be verified (activation link sent to address)

Workflow Process Visualizer

• Graphical representation of approval process (BETA)
• Read only representation

Visualforce Enhancements

• Ability to add visualforce page as a dashboard component
  • Will display information based on the user logged in, not the running user
• Ability to use visualforce pages as custom help
  (when users click this link) 
  

Declarativ
e App Builder Enhancements

• TEXT() function support for picklists in formulas and workflow field updates
• INCLUDES(), ISNULL(), PRIORVALUE(), and ISCHANGED() support for multi-select picklists
• Support for encoding functions in formuals: HTMLENCODE, JSENCODE, JSINHTMLCODE, URLCODE
• Managed package versioning and deprecation support

From the official blog, here are a few ideas that are marked for deployment next release:

• Sales Funnel Graphic
  
• Display actual values in charts (long overdue IMO)
  
• Ability to use multi picklists in formulas (excellent, this increases the functionality of the multi picklist exponentially; I can already think of a few ways to apply this to my org)
• Recurring tasks
• Better iPhone support
• Blackberry Storm support
• Several tweaks
• New Apex functionality

You can check out the full list here.

Much has already been said about the Spring 09 release:

Official Release Notes

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Salesforce <Source>

Perspectives on Salesforce

Jeff Douglas

I won’t elaborate much except to say that I am specifically looking forward to:

• Snapshots of report data; trending of reports (instead of copying the records of an object like in an analytic snapshot, it just copies the report data)
• Delegated data administration (ability to grant granular access for a profile to specific object, regardless of hierarchy – for instance HR to payroll object)
• Email to case as a service (no box required behind the firewall)
• Text() functions for picklists (I voted for this one so I take all credit :))
• Report formulas vastly more capable (it looks like the formula has the same capabilities as a custom field… all I can say is YES!)
• Cross object field update for custom objects (but not for standard?  field update can update a field on a related object so long as it is a custom object)