Get Comfy with the Winter ’19 Pre-Release

Sometimes the best news comes without a fanfare. Now it’s official that the entire Salesforce Weekly team will be absent from Dreamforce – but don’t worry, we can still do it remotely – we were looking for something to cheer us up and distract us from the mountains of work we currently find ourselves under.

So we were pleased when we got an anonymous tip-off that now might be a good time to log in to any old pre-release orgs we had laying around, since we might notice something different going on. And we should did notice – because YAY WINTER ’19 IS HERE!

And what did we find in our newly Winter-ed pre-release org? Well, here are just a few things that jumped out at us early on…

1) Snowboardin’ Astro!

Yeah, let’s start with the most important thing. As we all know, Salesforce isn’t actually a software company. They can’t be, can they? Not with the whole ‘No Software’ thing they had going on for years and years. No, the truth is that Salesforce is actually a producer of logos. They are in fact a CCC – a cute critter company – with business applications just being a by-product of their main output.

So I’m sure the thing you’re all most excited to see in Winter ’19 is the new release logo. Well, say hello to snowboardin’ Astro!

 

2) Getting comfy? Or feeling dense?

OK, I’ll dial the snark down a little now and share the first actual new feature that I’m excited by. And, honestly, this one was the reason I logged into the pre-release org in the first place – to see if it had finally arrived (and it has!).

If the wonderful whitespace winter wonderland of Lightning Experience was leaving you a little snowblind, then REJOICE – because Density Settings are here!

You can now choose between two options – ‘Comfy’, the LEX look you’re used to, with field labels on top and plenty of space, or ‘Compact’, the denser choice with field labels to the left and more squeezed onto the screen.

Here’s a little compare and contract of an account page with the two different options:

Comfy

Compact

 

I was looking forward to this long-promised enhancement, and while I think the Classic-style ‘Compact’ option might take a bit of getting used to within the rest of the LEX context, this is a great option to have. Especially since users can set their own preference too.

 

3) Non-Flash Flow is coming… slowly

We know there is a non-Flash flow builder on its way, and we also know that it’s probably going to land just-in-time for the retirement of Flash, so it’s not here just yet. But, it must be closer than ever, because the Flows page in Setup is starting to make some noise about what to expect. Check it out:

Oh and if you’re wondering what happens when you click that link about the retirement plan… Well, you get a 404 error. Currently, at least. But keep your eyes on https://admin.salesforce.com/flowbuilder – where the link points – as I guess we can expect that page to go live when Winter ’19 is a bit more official.

 

BONUS: Some additional MVP favourites

The above is about all we’ve had time to find ourselves, but we wanted to point you in the direction of a few other things we’ve heard about from some of our Salesforce MVP friends.

So, hat-tips all round for…

Cheryl, who spotted that we can now use custom metadata types in formulas:

Jeremiah, who shared that there is now a ‘search within list view’ feature (amazing!):

…and Mohith, who saw this very intriguing tab:

Alright, that’s is for now folks. Back to the day jobs. Maybe we’ll get time to add to the list in coming weeks, but if not then do break your way into a pre-release org and check Winter ’19 out for yourselves!