Admin News: Critical Updates and Product Retirements
It’s that time of year again, with the Winter ’20 Release approaching. And with each release, there are a number of Critical Updates. In addition this release highlights a number of products are also inline to be retired over the coming year.
Let’s take a look at what these important updates are and how to prepare for the transition.
Critical Updates: Know the impact
Every release has a number of Critical Updates. These allow admins/developers to plan for a change to the platform by giving some control over when the update is released.
Background: What are critical updates?
For example, as an Admin/Developer you can choose to activate a Critical Update before its planned activation date. For example, this means if you have a sandbox environment you can choose to activate the update and test any impacts on your org.
These updates can be many and varied, some with limited impact (if any) to end users, for example by updating how HTML code is handled/displayed to a user.
Other updates, will have a very noticeable impact. Like the upcoming Lightning Experience critical update.
Winter ’20 Release: Critical Updates
Let’s take a look at the some of the highest potential impact updates coming our way. These are Updates which are ‘enforced’ by Salesforce in this release… Meaning they will be activated automatically as part of Winter ’20 release.
Lightning Experience for Users
Who will this impact? This one will automatically impact users who have the ‘Lightning Experience User’ permission.
They may have this permission because they are:
- allocated to a Standard Profile (these are the ones you can modify that ‘come with Salesforce’)
- a Custom Profile which was cloned from a Standard Profile after Winter ’16 release,
- have a Permission Set which includes the ‘Lightning Experience User’ permission.
When? Salesforce will activate this Critical Update is globally throughout October.
What you can do to prepare: Read up on the update here, and also read the Frequently Asked Questions.
The Lightning Transition Assistant, will also help give you information specific to your org on the transition. And will include things like what likely wouldn’t work in Lightning, which profiles are ready to go, etc./
Also, keep in mind that users will be able to still switch between Lightning and Classic. So that is a small grace, if you need it. But note that Users will be automatically switched back to Lightning at the start of each week.
Security Updates for Email and HTTPS Connections
What is the change? From a high level, these updates improve the general security and functionality of Email and how your browser connects with Salesforce.
Specifically, there are a number of updates to take note of:
- Improve Email Security with Redesigned DKIM Keys
- Restrict Use of Salesforce Classic HTML-Based Email Templates to Secure Browsers
- Require TLS 1.2 for HTTPS Connections
- Require TLS 1.2 in Communities and Sites
Who will this impact? All Salesforce orgs, with users and API connections potentially impacted.
For example, the TLS 1.2 changes may impact users with old browsers. While the update re: DKIM Key is used as a way to potentially avoid spam filters in email clients.
When? As part of Winter ’20 release (throughout October). You can check the specific date for your org by going into “Critical Updates” in your Setup menu.
What you can do to prepare: Review the release notes above. Most of these changes shouldn’t require a ‘heavy lift’ from admins.
Note re: the TLS 1.2 change, a quick review how users are connecting currently should confirm they are using modern browsers. If you remember the TLS 1.0 deactivation, the steps would be very similar here. Users on current browsers should be fine – and API connections which are ‘hard coded’ to use TLS 1.1 may not connect once update is activated.
API Only Users Can Access Only Salesforce APIs
Who will this impact? Any user which has the ‘API Only User’ permission. This update ensures that these users ONLY can access Salesforce via API, and not via UI.
When? As part of Winter ’20 release.
What you can do to prepare: This one is probably the simplest. If you have a user which is impacted and they need more access – an Admin can update their permissions to not include the ‘API Only User’.
A note for Admins: Other Critical Updates
There are a number of Critical Updates, and each org is different, this means high impact updates for your environment may not be covered here. So it is recommended that you check the release notes for a full overview of all Critical Updates.
Caution: Product Retirement Ahead
Over the coming year, we see three products entering the ‘transition to retirement’.
The good news is, two of these products have direct replacements/upgrades available – so if you are still using them, you can start to plan your transition now.
Original Territory Management Is Being Retired
The first product on the list, is the Original Territory Management module (or Territory Management v1.0).
Salesforce launched the beta of Enterprise Territory Management in 2014. and has been adding new features and functionality to Enterprise Territory Management (Territory Management v2.0) over the last few years.
It has now been built into a more advanced version for managing territories, and ties exclusively into Collaborative Forecast module (and in turn Lightning Experience).
When?
As part of Summer ’20 release next year, which is likely to be around May/June 2020.
Why?
As Salesforce are pushing the Lightning Experience Transition, starting with this release (see above). They are clearly taking the opportunity to retire the Original Territory Management and Customisable Forecasting (see below) – and give an additional reason for users on the older products to upgrade and switch to Lightning Experience.
Admin actions:
Simply put, if you are still using Territory Management 1.0, now is the time to start planning your upgrade to Territory Management 2.0.
You can read more about the considerations and planning for the transition here.
Also, there is a key step when you are ready to transition where you may need to contact Salesforce Support to ensure users don’t lose access to old data as part of the migration. Read more here.
Note: If you are using Customizable Forecasts (see below), you will need to plan the update to Collaborative Forecasts at the same time as the modules are dependant on each other.
Customizable Forecasts Also Entering Retirement
Other than being spelt the American way, the time has also come for Customizable Forecasts.
Much like Enterprise Territory Management, there have been countless improvements made to Collaborative Forecast module over the last two years.
I remember a time when it couldn’t even handle custom fiscal years! And Quotas were only able to be entered by API/Dataloader until recently.
But the key here again, is that it ties exclusively into Enterprise Territory Mangaement (TM 2.0) and of course Lightning Experience…
When?
As part of Summer ’20 release next year, which is likely to be around May/June 2020.
Admin actions:
Now is the time to start planning your upgrade to Collaborative Forecasts.
If you are using Original Territory Management, you need to also plan the update to Territory Management 2.0.
You can read more about the considerations and planning for the transition here.
RIP Data.com Prospector and Clean
The final ‘old horse’ being putting out to the retirement pastures soon will be Data.com Prospector and Clean.
With GDPR forcing a rethink of how data is managed and processed. The offering for Data.com become quite limited in certain territories (specifically in the UK/EU).
Additionally, a change to licensing from D&B / etc, has meant changes to the product where inevitable.
Salesforce has worked with a number of data providers to package and distribute what is now coined ‘Lightning Data‘ via the Appexchange. This now also gives you access to additional products and services, and no doubt more will come online over time.
When?
Depends on your contract, Salesforce will essentially stop renewing this product as part of your subscription.
And the products will be retired in July 2020.
Admin actions:
You can read the FAQs here, and if you use the service your AE will likely be in touch to discuss options as part of the renewal process.
The main actions for Admins will be to prepare reports/workflows/apex/etc to stop using Data.com specific fields. You can read the Salesforce guide here.
