Salesforce Summer ’13 Release to Focus on Mobile, Chatter, Channel Partners and More

Three times a year Salesforce.com comes out with releases with new enhancements to the Salesforce.com platform.  Recently Salesforce.com announced the release of Summer ’13.  Just like each release before this […]

About the Author: Gary Galvin

May 8, 2013

Three times a year Salesforce.com comes out with releases with new enhancements to the Salesforce.com platform.  Recently Salesforce.com announced the release of Summer ’13.  Just like each release before this one there will be a slew of enhancements all throughout Salesforce.

The full feature release can be downloaded in this printable PDF.  But if you don’t want to read 273-pages of notes I would recommend downloading this 24-page document which gives you a general overview of all the new features.

Saleforce Summer 13

Here are a few highlights that we think are exciting.

Mobile with Salesforce Touch

Last September I downloaded an early version of Salesforce Touch (The mobile version of Salesforce.com) and wasn’t too pleased because of it’s limitation.  In talking with many clients and friends they too were underwhelmed.  No longer is that the case.  The recent updates to Salesforce Touch have improved and I personally use it on my iPhone throughout the day when I am mobile.  If you are ready to download Salesforce Touch on your mobile device (Click to download onto your iPhone or iPad) then now is the time.  You will enjoy it and the productivity that comes with it.  In addition to the recent updates to Salesforce Touch the following list are some of our favorite updates to Salesforce Touch in Summer ’13:
  • Dashboards and the ability to view some of the most critical data while on the go.
  • Offline (Plane) mode allows you to use Salesforce while offline or on Airplane mode
  • Touch tasks now allows you to check a task as complete with one click of a checkbox.
  • Twitter profiles of your accounts and contacts.

Sell with Channel Partners using Chatter Communities

If your company has channel partners, distributors or general partners outside your company you can now share information and collaborate on opportunities you might be working on together.  Salesforce Communities are private, branded sites where your external partners can all connect.

“Opportunity Splits” is Finally Here

Finally!! This has been a requirement we have been hearing from clients for years and although we have been able to customize a solution to fit the need to split commissions it has been our hope that this gets added to Salesforce.com.  In Summer ’13 we will see this feature.  Essentially “Opportunity Splits” lets users split credit across opportunity team members. This will allow those team members who are working on one opportunity to get partial credit in their pipelines and quota.  We all know it oftentimes takes more than one person to help out on an opportunity but the one sales person gets all the credit in the opportunity reports.  With the opportunity splits you can now share that success across the whole team.

What Else is There?

Of course these are not all the features in the Summer ’13.  You can find that extensive list in the Release Notes.  If you want to take full advantage of the upcoming releases then I recommend taking a look at the release notes.  If there are features that really interest you then you can view more details about them in this printable PDF. What do you think?  I have only list a few of many features so if there are some you are just as excited about let me know.

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