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There may be outdated information or suggestions in this article that made sense at the time of the release, but no longer. For the most up-to-date information about this topic, use a keyword in the search bar above. If you're looking for more current release notes, you can find those here.
Salesforce's Spring '14 release happened in April! We've picked out a few of the most exciting new features that were delivered as part of that release. Some of them require configuration so they won't be immediately visible in your account. We'll help you get those features up and running if you want to use them, or you can visit the help tab for instructions on how to do them yourself.
Chatter Enhancements
The Spring release brings us a cool new feature that adds to the functionality of Chatter Groups. (If you're not using Chatter Groups at your organization, they are a wonderful tool for collaboration and productivity. Plus, they're fun! Read more about getting started with Chatter here.)
Group Announcements
Call attention to important information that you need to get to your colleagues in Chatter. Announcements are a new type of Chatter post that get posted twice: once in the group feed, and once on the left-hand side, where it will stand out like a "sticky note." You also choose an expiration date for your Announcement so that once it's no longer relevant, it will automatically disappear.
Posting an announcement:
And after it's been posted:
If you would like to use this feature, contact the PatronManager Client Administration team by clicking the red "Submit a Support Request" button in the PatronManager Help tab and we can activate it for you.
Reporting Enhancements
Every time Salesforce comes out with new reporting features, we get very excited. Here are four notable enhancements from the Spring '14 release:
Flexible Sorting in Reports
When you create summary groupings in reports, you can now sort the report by those summary values.
For example, before this new feature, you could group the donation report below by the "Type" field, as we did in this example -- but the groupings could only be displayed in alphabetical order (Auction, Board, Classes, etc.).
Now you can use the "Sorted By:" dropdown in the report to choose a different field to sort by -- here we're sorting by Amount (descending) so we can see which Types of donations represent the most revenue:
This gives you more control over the way your reports show you information, and can make it easier to see the most important parts of your report at a glance. (You can read more about this feature here!)
Floating Report Headers
As you're scrolling down through a long report, it's easy to forget what the header for each column is. Now you can "freeze" your headers in summary and matrix reports so they "float" down with you while you scroll.
When you scroll past the first row of data, a little triangle enclosed in a rectangle will appear. Click on it!
Keep scrolling, and as you do, the headers will float over your report data so you always know what you're looking at.
Export Reports Without Footers
Usually, when you export a report in PatronManager, the .csv or Excel file that's created contains a footer that includes the name of the report and the date it's generated. If you find that the footer is a nuisance, you can disable it for all reports.
To suppress the report footer, go to Setup | Customize | Reports & Dashboards | User Interface, then select Export Reports Without Footers.
Hide Unused Report Types
Too many options can be confusing and intimidating when it comes to creating new reports. This feature lets you eliminate some of the clutter of unused report types.
We recommend you ask us for advice on which Report Types to hide --contact the PatronManager Client Administration team by clicking the red "Submit a Support Request" button in the PatronManager Help tab and we can help!
