Whats new in Chatter in Salesforce ’12 release

Since past few releases, Chatter has been one of the main thrust areas of Salesforce. The Spring ‘12 release continues that tradition. This article summarizes the main Chatter features in Spring ‘12 release.

Chatter Messenger

Chatter messenger allows people within the organization to chat securely. This functionality is currently available as a pilot program. The interface of the chat is similar to other industry standard chat utilities. In Spring ’12 release, to enable Chatter Messenger in your organization, customers will need to contact Salesforce. Once Salesforce has enabled Chatter Messenger in your Salesforce instance, you will be able to set it up at Your Name > Setup > Customize > Chatter > Chat Settings. Salesforce also supports tags to enable/disable Chatter Messenger in custom Visualforce pages.

Chatter Bookmarks

Chatter Bookmarks represents saved posts. If you like any post, you can click on the book icon at the right of a Chatter message to bookmark it. If someone comments on a post you bookmarked, you receive an email notification. In the Chatter tab, in the left navbar there is a link for Bookmarks that displays the list of Bookmarks.

Chatter Bookmark screenshot

Chatter Bookmark screenshot

Chatter Reposts

Similar to Twitter retweet, Chatter supports sharing message. Messages can be shared with

  1. Chatter Groups (to which you are a member)
  2. Email
  3. Chatter messenger
  4. Your own profile

When sharing posts, comments to the original post are not shared. Also user cannot share a post with file attached.

Chatter Influencer

One of the most prominent Chatter feature in Spring ’12 is Chatter Influencer. Based upon Posts & Comments, Comments received & Likes received, Chatter classifies users as Chatter Influencers. A score is computed for each user which is then used to classify Chatter users into three categories

  1. Observers
  2. Active Influencer
  3. Top Influencer

Users can hover over a Salesforce chatter user to reveal her influence.

Chatter Influencer screenshot

Chatter Influencer screenshot

Other Chatter Features

Attaching files to Chatter comments is now supported. Files that are attached may be either in Salesforce or on desktop. The user may now specify share settings for files that are uploaded to Chatter.

Chatter file access screenshot

Chatter file access screenshot

In Spring release, Chatter file size has now been raised from 100 MB to 2 GB. The files uploaded using Chatter are available via the Files tab.

Chatter Search results have been enhanced such that commonly used records appear higher in search results. Youtube videos are also now included in Search results.

Last but not the least; Chatter is now supported on Android

For any query on Chatter in Salesforce, contact support@astreait.com