I am a few weeks months release behind on this post.  It is amazing how much this platform changes, even just one release later.  These notes are not completely comprehensive.  Make sure to check out:

Spring 09 Release Page

Spring 09 Release Notes

Spring 09 Release Training

More coming on Summer 09 shortly.

User Productivity

Opportunity Genius

• To enable (administrator perspective)
  • Customize –> Opportunities –> Similar Opportunities
  • Select 3-10 fields (only on the opportunity object) to search for similar opportunities
  • Add similar opportunities to the related list on the appropriate page layout(s)
• To search (user perspective)
  • Open an opportunity and find the Similar Opportunities related list.  Click Find.
    • Note: similar opportunities are not populated automatically.  Opportunities must be found and bookmarked to appear in the related list.
  • Select relevant opportunities (presented in order of relevancy based upon search criteria) and click bookmark.  They will now appear in the Similar Opportunities Related list only on that opportunity (if you pull up opportunity A and mark B as similar, opportunity B will not list opportunity A as similar).

Enhanced Search

• Enabled by default
• Document contents in Salesforce will be indexed
  • Searching to find a document will search the entire contents of all documents
  • Supported doc types:

    PDF
    .pdf
    PPT
    .pot, .pps, .ppt
    RTF
    .rtf
    Text
    .c, .cpp, .css, .csv, .ini, .java, .log, .sql, .txt
    Word
    .doc, .dot
    XLS
    .xls, .xlt
    XML
    .xml

  • Documents are indexed and made searchable immediately upon upload
  • Note:  Microsoft Office 2007 native documents (.docx, .xlsx, etc) are not supported

Time Picker for Events

• When adjusting times on an event, menus are now drop down instead of a manual entry

Collaboration Tools

Salesforce Content

• Presentation assembly
  • Create presentations easily by dragging slides from various presentations into new deck, live in Salesforce Content
• Content Packs
  • Create and easily distribute a group or related documents (e.g. send a prospect a manufacturing content pack that has a few general docs and a few specific to manufacturing)
• Personal Workspace
  • Store documents in the cloud with versioning control
• Content Delivery
  • Capabilities
    • Share documents or content packs with clients/prospects
    • Determine which clients/prospects have viewed/downloaded content & notify on first read
    • Option to allow file download only as PPT or PDF
    • Set content expiration
    • Send link to client
  • Notes
    • Limits on page views and bandwidth consumption are org-wide
    • Non-content users can only convert 1 file at a time into a URL
    • Content users can convert multiple files at a time into a content pack
    • Irregular fonts or shapes may not be represented correctly
    • Animations and other slide effects will not be present in preview

Salesforce Ideas

• When a user submits an idea, Salesforce post similar ideas below
  
  • Automatically enabled for all orgs (not a setting, no way to disable)

Salesforce to Salesforce

• Share same record with multiple companies
• Share products and opportunity products with partners
• Share formula fields
• Create pre-defined templates organized by partner type
• Share records through API including data loader, excel connector

PRM

• Allow partners to manage customer cases through the partner portal
• Allow partners to send email from the partner portal

Customer Portal

• Customer Administration
  • Delegate customer to have access to create new portal users, edit existing users, reset passwords, and deactivate customer users for their associated account
  • No built-in limit on number of portal users an account can consume (limit can be implemented with an apex trigger)
• Customer Portal Super User
  • Delegate customer to have ability to view/edit all cases and contacts associated with their account

Business Process

Enhanced Page Layout Editor

• Switch page layouts from within editor
  
• WYSIWYG editor
• Search function for related lists and other page elements
• Can now add blank space to page layout
• Change tab order per section
• Org-wide setting, enabled by default

Email to Case as a Service

• Does not require use of an email client behind the firewall
• 10MB mail size limit
• Steps to configure:
  • Enable email to case
  • Set up routing address(es)
  • Verify address(es)
  • Setup forwarding from email address to Salesforce address (do not use an auto-forwarding rule)
    Example using an AD user to an AD contact.  There may be a better way to accomplish this; I am far from an AD expert:
    

Campaign Enhancements

• Campaign members related list – can now view/edit/add on one page and two subpages
  

Global Business Hours for Holidays

• Associate ho
  liday to multiple business hours
• Holidays are automatically adjusted for appropriate time zone
• One date range for per holiday record (7/4/08 and 7/4/09 are two records; use the clone button to speed the process up)

Delegated Administration

• Ability to grant “View all” or “Modify all” per object to profile
   
  • Overrides sharing rules and role hierarchy
  • The Modify All permission on an object is currently the only way to provide transfer/delete permissions to records owned by those equal/higher in the role hierarchy (excluding leads)
• Modify all permission also grants mass transfer and mass deletion of records if “View Setup and Configuration” is enabled for the profile
• Not available for customer/partner profiles

Define a Case

From Salesforce:

A case is a detailed description of a customer’s feedback, problem, or question. Your organization can use cases to track and solve your customers’ issues. You can enter cases manually in the Cases tab, or your administrator can set up Web-to-Case and Email-to-Case to gather customer feedback from your company’s website and customer emails. Your customers can also create and submit new cases on your Self-Service portal.

Understand that cases are typically used for issue tracking and beyond that it really depends on your organization’s implementation.

Describe use cases for Case Hierarchies

Case hierarchies can be used to track sub-cases.  For instance, let’s say that the IT department uses cases to log new user creations.  In this situation, each new user requires 3 different accounts: salesforce.com, unix, and windows.  HR must also prepare the person’s paperwork and have them sign off on this documentation.  Here’s how this could break down using case hierarchy:

• Parent Case: New hire (person name), Case Owner: HR Person
  • Child Case: Windows Login, Case Owner: Windows Admin
  • Child Case: Unix Login, Case Owner; Unix Admin
  • Child Case: Salesforce.com Login, Owner: SF Admin

Note that each case is owned by a different user (HR, Windows Admin, Unix Admin, SF Admin).  This gives you much greater flexibility and accountability than having a single shared case.

Describe how to use Case Queues to manage Cases

Case queues work like any other queue.  Unassigned cases should get assigned to a case queue until a user takes ownership of the issue.  This is useful if you have a staff of different users resolving cases as they are available for work.

Describe how to use a Case Assignment Rule to assign and route Cases

Case assignment rules are similar to lead assignment rules.  Rules are executed in order; if no order matches the default assignment is used.

Describe use cases for Web-to-Case

Customer request page on your company website.  IT support request page on an intranet page.  You can repurpose web-to-case for plenty of other processes as well.

Describe uses cases for Email-to-Case

An email address like support@salesforce.com.  Basically the same principal applies to email-to-case as web to case: a support email account or helpdesk/call center situation is ideal for this.  An added benefit of email-to-case is that incoming/outbound emails can be tracked and attached to cases automatically.

Note that email to case prior to Spring 09 required a software agent to be run behind the company firewall.  Email to case on demand was released as a feature in the Spring 09 release and removes the need for this agent.  Understand how each of these works and the differences between the two (essentially the agent monitors emails and assigns cases as needed, while on demand uses email forward to allow this process to happen on the Salesforce end).

Describe the functionality of the Case Escalation Rule

Case escalation rules are designed to escalate cases when they meet certain criteria.  After X number of hours (and 30 minute increments).  Case escalations can email up to 5 non Salesforce users.

Describe the functionality of the Case Auto-Response Rule

The case auto response rules can determine which email response will be sent when a customer submits a case through email, website, or self service portal.  This allows you to configure different email responses for different customers, and so forth.

Describe the functionality of the Business Hours

Business hours allow you to assign cases to different time zones, and escalate cases according to time zone.

Example:  East coast support staff and West coast support staff, both have business hours 8-5 and case to escalate after 3 hours.  Each get a new case assigned at 4p EST.  The East coast case will escalate the following day at 10a, while the West coast will escalate at 4p PST (7p EST).  Without different business hours per time zone configured, they would both escalate at the same time.

Note that Age Over and Age are two different entities.  Age (as defined in reporting) does not take business hours into consideration, while the escalation rules (Age_over) do use business hours.  Last time I checked into this you could get a Business Age field added from Salesforce by request only.

Configure the settings and rules for Case processing, including Business Hours, and Escalation

1. Customize –> Cases –> Support Settings
2. Company Profile –> Business Hours
3. Customize –> Cases –> Escalation Rules

• Default Case Owner
• Notify Default Case Owner
  • Option to email case owner when a new case is assigned to them
• Automated Case User
  • User listed in case history for default creation and actions until reassigned
• Case Creation Template
  • Email to send to person requesting the case acknowledging creation of case
• Case Assigned Template
  • Email to send to case owner
• Case Close Template
  • Email sent to requestor indicating that the case is closed
• Email Case Comments Notification to Contacts
  • When enabled allows contacts outside of the self service portal to receive notifications when case comments are updated
• Notify Case Owner of New Case Comments
• Early Triggers Enabled
• Enable Suggested Solutions
• Send Case Notifications from System Address
  • If not checked, notification updates will be sent from user that updates the case
• Notify Case Owners when Case Ownership Changes

See “Customizing Support Settings” for more info.

Rules and the use of Email Templates

Customize –> Cases –> Auto-Response Rules

Case auto-response rules work the same as lead auto-response rules. The first rule met sends the associated email template and ends the process.  If no rule is met, the default email template is used.

Define Solutions and how they can be associated with Cases

• A solution is a defined answer to a support issue.  For instance, the solution “turn on computer” could be the answer to the case “cannot turn on computer”.
• Solutions have a many-to-many relationship to cases (a solution can be tied to many cases, and a case can have many solutions). 
  • See “How are Cases and Solutions related” for more info.
• Solutions have a status field (draft, published, etc) that allow for easy maintenance and prevent premature visibility of unapproved solutions. </L
  i>
• Solutions can be made available in the self service portal and public knowledge base.

See “How are Cases and Solutions related” for more info.

Build a Solution Category tree and assign Solutions to Categories

Customize –> Solutions –> Solution Categories

Solutions are assigned in the categories related list in on the solution record.  A solution can belong to many categories.

Define suggested solutions and explain where to use them

Suggested solutions are the top 10 recommended solutions based upon a hidden formula that rates based upon:

• Word frequency in all solutions
• Word frequency in similar cases with related solutions
• Proximity of the keywords within the solutions
• Word similarities to self-closed cases and solutions rated useful by Self-Service users

Suggested solutions can be used:

• Case page: click view suggested solutions and it will show the user entering the case.
• Customer Portal and Self Service Portal: Customers can view suggested solutions when they submit a case online.
• Case auto responses:  you can add the merge field {!Case_Suggested_Solutions} and it will include these in the email.

Describe what content is accessible via the Self-Service Portal

Enterprise and Unlimited Edition only.

Cases can be logged; past cases can be viewed.  Solutions can be browsed if this option is enabled.  Suggested solutions can be enabled.  Activities can be shown if marked as available for self service portal, as can case comments if the comment is marked publicly viewable.

Describe the ways to access the Self-Service Portal

The self service portal is accessed by users through a website; this site is generated when the self service portal is enabled by the system administrator.  The system administrator can export the code or URL to the site and import this code/URL to the appropriate website.

Build a Case Queue, Assignment Rule, Web-to-Case, and corresponding Auto-Response Rule

1. Manage Users –> Queues
2. Customize –> Cases –> Assignment Rules
3. Customize –> Self Service –> Web-to-Case (Pro+)
4. Customize –> Cases –> Auto-Response Rules