Spring may not yet have arrived, but the Salesforce Spring '17 Release almost has, and for now that will have to do. 

Every set of release notes is pretty long (100,000+ words) and includes everything from bug fixes to new features. For your convenience, I've highlighted my four favorite features from this release that I encourage you to borrow for your next local user group meeting or internal strategy session. 

Lightning Readiness Check (All Clouds)
While Lightning has many advantages (I love kanban), its lack of feature parity with Salesforce Classic has long been a thorn in the side of developers, admins, and consultants alike (who doesn't love a good JavaScript button?).

Fortunately for us, Salesforce always has its ear to the ground listening to the needs of its users through forums like the IdeaExchange. Not only have they made significant strides towards bringing 100% of the features available in Classic into Lightning, but are also making it easier for companies built on Classic to weigh the pros and cons of switching over. 

The Lightning Readiness Check allows every company to quickly run a personalized readiness report that evaluates the specific features and customizations that will be gained or lost by making the switch. This is just the first step, so if you like what the report has to tell you, sign up for a consultation with a Lightning Experience expert.

Automated Activity Capture (Sales Cloud)
We all hate data entry. The only problem is managers, operations, business intelligence and executives love data. So what's a sales rep to do? Get SalesforceIQ Inbox to do the work for you.

SalesforceIQ Inbox is a godsend for sales reps who want to spend all day in their inbox but have had to spend part of their day logging activity in Salesforce. No longer do they have to perform duplicate entry of activities, and no longer do their managers have to chase down information for a full-bodied view of the customer interactions taking place. 

CPQ for Lightning Partner Communities (Community Cloud)
Communities provide customers, vendors, agencies, and partners with a direct connection to the data they find most valuable. No one should have to pick up the phone or fire off an email to find out their doctor's schedule, how to restart their phone, or get a quote to place an ad in the local paper.

Salesforce is enhancing Communities with Salesforce CPQ to make quoting and selling easier. Salesforce CPQ (formerly SteelBrick) is a fantastic, Salesforce-native Quote-to-Cash tool that allows users to quickly assemble and send quotes that are not only accurate, but also expertly formatted and branded.

Before this update, extending CPQ capabilities to your partners required custom development. It's possible (we've done it) but time-consuming. With this tool, you can extend CPQ to your partners, allowing them to quote and sell just as effectively as your own sales reps, saving time and money while also increasing collaboration. 

Commerce Insights (Commerce Cloud)
Negotiating big deals may be an art, but retail commerce is a science, and Commerce Cloud represents the most fertile ground for Einstein (Salesforce's AI) to take root. 

AI is taking the common practice of cross-selling and upselling to a new, more intuitive level. For years, organizations have sought to increase sales based on their customers' previous orders. When you purchase a laptop on Apple's website you are prompted to purchase dongles to compensate for the ports they removed; when you order a toothbrush on Amazon, it suggests you also buy toothpaste; and McDonald's nailed it years ago with a simple question "Do you want fries with that?" 

With Commerce Insights, companies of all sizes can finally use transaction history to power smarter shopping experiences, suggesting to customers the products they want before they even know it themselves. This type of augmented intelligence is the next step in connecting your customer experiences to value.

The Salesforce Spring '17 Release is full of updates like these that we are excited to begin using at Bluewolf. To learn how the best companies get the most out of Salesforce and its many features, download The State of Salesforce Report now.