Sunday, March 16, 2014

3 Ways to Tell What Version of Salesforce You're Using

Your out-of-the-box Salesforce experience is typically driven by two attributes: your Salesforce edition and the version (i.e., which release) of your org.

The edition (e.g., Enterprise Edition, Developer Edition) is readily identified by examining your browser's title bar or running a query: SELECT Id, Name, OrganizationType FROM Organization

But finding the version is a bit trickier, with no "official" method to reference. You can try one of the three methods below:
  • Switch to one of the standard, out-of-the-box apps (e.g., Sales), and look at the app logo

  • Create or edit a formula field, and look for the largest API version in the $Api object

  • Generate an Enterprise WSDL (Setup > Build > Develop > API) and look for the SOAP service endpoint location

You can convert the API version number into a release using the assumptions that Salesforce pushes three releases a year (Winter, Spring, Summer) and that each release corresponds to a new major version number. For example, we know that Winter '14 is API version 29.0. This means that 28.0 is Summer '13, and 30.0 will be Spring '14.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Allowed User License Changes: Upgrades, Downgrades, Switches?

An infrequent but significant question that companies ask about Salesforce user licenses is: Can I switch from this license to that license? At the time of Winter '14, I could not find an official matrix of allowed user license changes. However, the question lingers, and I balked at the thought of manually trying to change user licenses to see what happens every time I needed an answer.

Using what I hope is a valid approach, I've compiled a matrix of allowed changes, using what licenses existed in my Winter '14 test org. I'm sharing the high-level summary of my approach in case anyone case to reproduce the same results.
  1. Create test profiles for every user license
  2. Run an Apex test to compile the results of every possible change among profiles
Below are the user licenses that were analyzed and included in these results:
  • Chatter External
  • Chatter Free
  • Chatter Only
  • Content Only
  • Customer Community
  • Customer Community Login
  • Customer Portal Manager Custom
  • Customer Portal Manager Standard
  • Force.com - One App
  • Gold Partner
  • High Volume Customer Portal
  • Knowledge Only
  • Partner Community
  • Partner Community Login
  • Salesforce
  • Salesforce Platform
  • Siteforce Only
  • Work.com Only
My wish is that anyone asking the same question can now refer back to this matrix for a quick answer. All feedback on the accuracy of the results will be greatly appreciated.