Salesforce Spring '18 Release Highlights

Core Lightning Features

Show Your True Colors with Themes in Lightning Experience

Rally your team around your brand and important initiatives, like a new product launch, with a set of custom brand images and colors in your org. We call them themes. You can choose one of Salesforce’s built-in themes or create your own custom themes with just a few clicks. This feature is new in Lightning Experience.

Available in: Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions

https://docs.releasenotes.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_lightning_themes.htm

Supercharge Your Productivity with Personalized Navigation in Lightning Experience

Personalize an app’s navigation bar to suit the unique way you work. You can reorder items, and rename or remove items that you’ve added. We’ve also given you more ways to navigate with temporary tabs. This feature is new in Lightning Experience.

Personalized navigation in Lightning Experience is similar to customized tab sets in Salesforce Classic but better. In Lightning Experience, the navigation bar can contain more than just object-level items, like Accounts. You can add granular items, like a dashboard, list, or record.

Available in: Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_lightning_personalized_nav.htm

Boost Productivity with Quick Text and Marcos Everywhere

Macros are available in Lightning apps on most standard and custom objects. Quick Text joins your Lightning Experience toolbox, too. These changes apply to Lightning Experience only.

Increase Your Efficiency with Quick Text

Why type the same message 20 times when you can insert predefined messages, like greetings, notes, and answers to common questions. You can use Quick Text on all standard and custom objects in the following supported quick actions: Email, Log a Call, Social, and Live Agent chats. Previously available only in Salesforce Classic, now Quick text is available and enabled by default in Lightning Experience.

Available in: Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

https://docs.releasenotes.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_quick_text.htm

Let Macros Do Your Work Everywhere

Don’t waste your time clicking around and updating records with the same information over and over. Use macros to update most standard and custom object records in all Lightning apps. Previously, macros worked only in console navigation apps on the case, contact, lead, and custom objects. This change applies to Lightning Experience only.

Available in: Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

https://docs.releasenotes.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_macros.htm

Lightning Console Apps: Web Tabs, Pinned Region Lightning Pages, and More

We’ve got something for everyone in this release. Your console users can save time and effort with powerful tools like Quick Text and macros. As an admin, we’ve given you new design flexibility with pinned region pages and the new accordion component. And developers weren’t forgotten! This update gives them tools that allow deep integrations and improvements in automation. These changes apply to Lightning Experience only.

Available in: Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_lightning_console.htm

Sales

Leads: LinkedIn Integration and Conversion Configurability

Integrate with LinkedIn and customize the lead conversion window.

Available in: Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

Generate Leads from LinkedIn

Automatically add leads to Salesforce from LinkedIn Lead Gen advertisements. When prospective customers fill out a form on your LinkedIn ad, we convert the data directly to new Salesforce leads. This feature is new in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic.

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_sales_features_core_leads_linkedin_integration.htm

Streamline Lead Conversion Without Opportunities

Speed up the conversion process for sales teams that don’t create opportunities when they convert leads. Choose new default lead conversion settings for opportunities, or hide the opportunity section of the conversion window altogether. This change applies to Lightning Experience only.

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_sales_features_core_leads_conversion_oppty_config.htm

Path: Pick Your Own Path

There’s more to life than Stage and Status. Base a Path on any picklist field on standard objects so that your path can work the way your reps do. This change applies to Lightning Experience only.

Available in: Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_sales_features_core_path.htm

Lightning Experience Report Builder: Buckets, Cross Filters, and Summary Formulas (Beta)

The second beta release of the Lightning Experience report builder lets you categorize report data with buckets, include or exclude results from related objects with cross filters, and summarize data in new ways with summary formula columns. These changes apply to Lightning Experience only.

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_rd_reports_lightning_report_builder.htm?edition=&impact=

Dashboards: Better Tables, Subscriptions, and New Design Options

Dashboards are the best way to collect, curate, and collaborate on data from one or more reports. Add Lightning dashboard tables to provide record-level details in your dashboards. Subscribe to dashboards to refresh them on a schedule that you set, and receive results by email. Dress up your dashboards by customizing chart colors and background themes. Don’t forget to share insights using improved share-on-Chatter options! These changes apply to Lightning Experience only.

Available in: Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_rd_dashboards.htm?edition=&impact=

Lightning App Builder

Available in: Group, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

Create Pinned Region Pages for Your Console Apps

A pinned region remains displayed as you navigate to subtabs in a Lightning console app. Three new page templates are available for Lightning console apps to make it easier for console users to work with records. This feature is new in Lightning Experience.

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_forcecom_lab_page_templates_pinned.htm?edition=&impact=

Organize Components into Collapsible Sections

Manage screen clutter by grouping components into collapsible sections. The new Accordion component is like the Tabs component, but vertically stacked. You can use the Accordion component on all record pages. This feature is new in Lightning Experience.

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_forcecom_lab_comp_accordion.htm?edition=&impact=

Make Your Lightning App and Home Pages Dynamic

Setting visibility conditions for components isn’t limited to record pages anymore. Now you can set visibility rules on Lightning app and Home pages too.

App and Home pages aren’t associated with an object, so the filters you can use are limited to other contexts, such as User or Client. But that doesn’t mean that they’re less powerful. This feature is new in Lightning Experience.

https://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/spring18/release-notes/rn_forcecom_lab_dynamic_app_home_pages.htm?edition=&impact

Click here for Salesforce Spring ’18 full release notes.