The Salesforce Spring ’23 Release is upon us, with a number of new features and improvements coming our way. Let’s dive into some of those features coming our way!
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Most orgs may already have rolled out MFA, however a quick reminder that Spring ’23 release brings Auto-Enablement of MFA as part of the release.
Salesforce is starting the process of automatically enabling MFA for direct logins. This will occur in phases throughout 2023, starting with Spring ’23 Release.
Eventually Salesforce will enforce MFA by making it a standard part of the Salesforce login process.
If you haven’t started the process of migrating users and enabling MFA, do it as soon as possible. Salesforce has setup a Help Centre to help manage this process -> find out more here.
Flow Features/Improvements
It wouldn’t be a release, without changes and improvements to Flow.
If you are a Flow nerd like me, some handy little improvements are coming our way!
Flow Builder is receiving a useful update, further bridging the gap between Flow and Apex. A beta feature is being added to flow, which will allow users to pull in external data via a webservice into a Flow. This will mean we can pull in external data without the use of Apex or tools like Mulesoft! You will need to have Salesforce Enterprise, Unlimited or Developer Edition to take advantage though.
Additionally, another beta feature but potentially useful feature will be the ability for supported components and LWC to now be able to influence other components within the same screen. Meaning less screens needed to show to users.
Salesforce’s Migrate to Flow Tool
The Migrate To Flow tool, now will also support the ability to migrate existing processes within Process Builder to a Flow. There are still some considerations/limitations to which type of workflows/processes can be migrated using the tool as it is still a ‘preview feature’, but you can use the Migrate To Flow tool to migrate these action types:
Record update
Record create
Invoke flow
Invoke Apex
Email alert
And finally, there are a number of extensions available for users who have integrated Slack and Salesforce.
Spring ’23 Release: Sales Cloud
Collaborative Forecasts and Enterprise Territory Management get some attention in the Spring ’23 Release.
Starting with a simple, but powerful ability to now track forecasts using a custom date field. No longer are we constrained to forecast by one of the Salesforce default date fields (Close Date, Product Date, or Schedule Date)!
Flexibility for Tracking Forecasts by Custom Date (Source: Salesforce)
Next up, the actual page layout side of Forecasts get a much needed attention. Admins can now build and/or edit Forecast pages, much like they do with existing Lightning Flexipages!
The release notes highlight the ability to customise the page layout, including header and opportunity lists. And if you using Einstein Forecasting, you can add in the relevant component:
Salesforce Einstein Forecasting showing prediction details (Source: Salesforce)
Admins have been able to users access to import contact and leads in the past, but Salesforce is introducing a new Guided Experience to help import the data into your org quicker and more accurately.
Import Contacts and Leads with a Guided Experience (Source: Salesforce)
Spring ’23 Release: Service Cloud
Not to be left out, Service Cloud gets a number of new features too.
Looking through the release notes, most of the new features relate to ‘add-on’ products like Service Cloud Voice or Einstein, but there are still some useful additions in this release if you don’t have those products.
The biggest ‘out of the box’ feature for Service Cloud, is the ability to now upgrade or create Dynamic Forms on the Case and Lead records.
Check out this tutorial over at SalesforceBen, for Dynamic Forms.
Setup flow of Dynamic Forms, now available on Case and Lead objects (Source: Salesforce)
If you use the Messaging Channel in Service Cloud, there are quite a few enhancements to improve integration with Facebook Messenger.
The ability to prevent duplicate cases, when using Email-To-Case should also become easier in Spring ’23 release and the ‘Lightning Threading‘ feature. If you are using the Ref ID threading to track and link emails to cases, Spring ’23 contains a release update to enable the new Lightning Threading feature.
There are also, a number of additional Slack integrations for various Service Cloud features. For example, if you use Swarming or Incident Management.
When is Spring ’23 Release?
Salesforce Spring ’23 Release, starts rolling out globally from the 23rd January ’23. Most Salesforce orgs, will received it either February 3rd 2023 or February 10th 2023.
To confirm the release date for your org, please check the Maintenance Calendar to find out when your specific Salesforce org will get the Spring ’23 features released.
The final countdown is on, Salesforce’s Spring ’22 Release is almost here. With the rollout planned globally over the coming weeks, let’s dive into some of the top features of this release for Salesforce’s key products: Sales, Service and Experience Cloud.
Before we get into the fun stuff, let’s get a bit of housekeeping out of the way. And start by taking a look at some of the Release Updates that are scheduled to be enforced as part of Spring ’22 Release.
With this update, you can use reports to examine run-time details about your screen flows. Use these metrics to discover usage patterns and in turn to optimize your screen flows for users. This update is available for Salesforce orgs that don’t already capture run-time metrics for screen flows.
To improve security, users can no longer log in to Salesforce by using a username and password as URL query string parameters to the login URL. Any users who try to do so are redirected to the login page.
There are some additional Release Updates that relate more to the development side of Salesforce, you can check them out here in our other post: Spring ’22 Release for Developers.
Postponed Release Updates
There are a few key Release Updates that were scheduled to be enforced within Spring ’22 Release, have now been postponed, they include:
Configure a default No-Reply address from the Organization-Wide Addresses page from setup. Add an email address in Special Purpose Organization-Wide Email Addresses, then follow the steps outlined in the verification email sent to the new default No-Reply address. After you verify your default No-Reply address, set up and start the Test Run in the Release Update.
This update was first made available in Spring ’21 and was scheduled to be enforced in Spring ’22, but we postponed the enforcement date to Spring ’23.
In Lightning console apps, dialogs no longer stop you from interacting with the rest of the UI. This release update limits the focus of dialogs triggered by a workspace tab or subtab to only the tab that triggered it.
This update was first made available in Winter ’20 and was scheduled to be enforced in Spring ’22, but we postponed the enforcement date to Spring ’24.
Spring ’22 Release: Flows & Reports
Before we get into the cloud-specific changes, there are some really nifty new features relating to Reports and Flows in this release.
Flows (Builder, Runtime Improvements & Migration)
Salesforce continues to improve and add heaps of new features to Flow. With the migration/unification of Process Builders, Workflows and Flow into a single process automation tool.
As per the announcement last year, the roadmap for this migration looks like:
Migrate from Workflow Rules to Flows in Spring ’22
Migrate from Process Builders to Flows in Summer ’22
Disable the option to create new Workflow Rules and Process Builder in Winter ’23
And so, with Spring ’22 Release we see the beta version of the ‘Migrate to Flow’ tool supporting the migration of Workflow Rules to Flows.
Spring ’22: Beta version of the ‘Migrate to Flow‘ Tool How? Select a workflow rule (1) and click Migrate to Flow (2).
Flow Trigger Explorer
Flow Trigger Explorer, is a new feature which helps you dive into the Flows that may be applicable for the object/action within Salesforce, rather than hunting through the list view of Flows trying to find the specific flow.
So if you want to see flows that are associated with a specified object and that run when a record is created, updated, or deleted – now you can.
In this screenshot below, select an object (1) and a trigger (2) to see flows that run when a record for that object is created, updated, or deleted. See all of the before-save (3) and after-save flows (4) that run for the same object and trigger. Click a flow label (5) to open the flow in Flow Builder in a new tab. See any asynchronous paths (6) that are associated with flows that run for the same object and trigger. Click a menu dropdown and select Flow Details and Versions (7) to see details and activate or deactivate versions of the flow (8).
Spring ’22: Flow Trigger Explorer, showing flows that may apply when an Opportunity is Updated (Source: Salesforce)
Spring ’22: New Flow Details screen, accessed from the Flow Trigger Explorer
Speaking of Flow and how they run, there are a stack of ‘behind the scenes’ changes to Flow Builder for admins and Flow Runtime as part of this release, so be sure to check them out too.
With the enhanced report type selector, quickly access recently used report types and view the fields and objects that are included. See at a glance which report types are standard or custom, and keep the number of available report types manageable by hiding ones that you don’t need.
Spring ’22: Enhanced Report Type Selector (BETA) (Source: Salesforce)
Salesforce is also rolling out a beta version of the In-Line Edit within Reports, allowing users to edit multiple fields at the same time. No need to re-run a report after making an in-line edit to a field…
Spring ’22: Edit Multiple Fields Inline on the Report Run Page (BETA)
Spring ’22 Release: Sales Cloud
New features for Collaborative Forecasts
One simple but killer feature – at least for Sales teams which use Collaborative Forecasts – is the ability for admins to now create a Custom Filter within a Forecast Type!
Rather than having all opportunities grouped together based on owner/territory… Forecasts gives you the ability to include or exclude particular RecordTypes, allowing sales team to improve their forecasting accuracy.
While we are talking Forecasting, Sales Leaders will now be able to view recent changes made to a forecast for their team, by checking the ‘Show Changes in Last 7 Days’ option:
Spring ’22 Release: See Recent Changes in Forecast Categories (Source: Salesforce)
When selected, users will be able to see changes made week-on-week, within each Forecast Category:
Sales Leaders now also have the ability to see ‘Gap to Quota’ and ‘Pipeline Coverage’ as new columns within their Forecast, allowing for quicker understanding of what is happening within their teams.
Spring ’22: Get Insights from Core Forecasting KPIs Quickly (Source: Salesforce)
And for Admins, setting up a Forecast Type is about to become much easier. Spring ’22 Release combines Forecast Settings and the ability to now setup Forecast Types directly from the Setup Flow.
Spring ’22: Collaborative Forecast Setup Flow (Source: Salesforce)
Spring ’22: Collaborative Forecast Setup Flow (Source: Salesforce)
Pipeline Inspection: Overview
The use cases for Artificial Intelligence (AI) within Salesforce are countless. And we are seeing more features rolled out across the broad to surface key information that Sales teams can action.
Spring ’22 rolls out a few cool AI enhancements for Pipeline Inspection, surfacing information about when a deal isn’t predicted to close and other factors that could influence it.
In the picture below, you can see a snapshot of key opportunity metrics (1), insights that indicate a deal’s likelihood of closing (2) and informational insights about the opportunity or its account (3).
Spring ’22: Get More Insights About Opportunity Progress in Pipeline Inspection (Source: Salesforce)
There may be a few dependancies for Admins, as per the release notes:
This change applies to Pipeline Inspection, available at no cost in Performance and Unlimited editions. Pipeline Inspection is also included with Revenue Intelligence, which is available for an extra cost in Enterprise Edition.
To show your users the opportunity score tier and related insights, make sure to set up Einstein Opportunity Scoring. Set up Einstein Deal Insights in Pipeline Inspection so your users can see which opportunities scheduled to close this month are unlikely to be won during the same month. Also, when you set up Einstein Account Insights, your users get more of the informational insights.
Pipeline Inspection: Activities
Activity and engagement details are also available within Pipeline Inspection. This allows sales users to see details about past and upcoming activity relating to their pipeline.
To view the tab, you will need to enable Activity Metrics with Einstein Activity Capture.
Below, you can see the Activity tab (1), total number of activities or activities broken down by type (2). See what activity is coming up (3) and the next step (4). Plus, review past activity along with relevant insights (5). Finally, take immediate action, for example, by sending an email (6).
Spring ’22: Get Activity and Engagement Details in Pipeline Inspection (Source: Salesforce)
Allowing leaders within sales teams, the ability to apply relevant filters and view team/territory pipelines in one location.
Finally, there is also a great flow visualisation within Pipeline Inspector. (If you have Revenue Intelligence, which is available for an extra cost in Enterprise and Unlimited editions).
This chart shows the changes to opportunities in different forecast categories over time. Users can filter results to see the data that’s most useful to them.
Spring ’22: See Pipeline Changes from the Flow Tab (Source: Salesforce)
Einstein Activity Capture
Additionally there are some new features to give admins more control regarding how Einstein Activity Capture is configured. So you can check them out here.
Spring ’22 Release: Service Cloud
A big focus this release for Service Cloud appears to be on the Voice Channel improvements within Omni-Channel & Omni-Supervisor. These changes appear mostly for users who have either the ‘Service Cloud with Amazon Connect’ or ‘Service Cloud Voice with Partner Telephony’ (view the Telephony Models).
That doesn’t mean that the rest of Service Cloud was left out though – with a number of changes made. Some of the highlights I found include…
And finally, Workforce Engagement received a swag of improvements, if you use that feature/product within Service Cloud.
Spring ’22 Release: Experience Cloud
The next release comes with some pretty small, but highly useful changes for Experience Cloud admins…
With Spring ’22, admins will now be able to archive Experience Cloud sites! Previously available as beta, this is now generally available!
Another ‘bonus’ for admins, when making updates to a site, if you deactivate the site Salesforce will display a branded Service Not Available page on your site to non-admin and customer users. However, Admins can still access the site, make updates, and see the changes in real time.
Spring ’22: Service Not Available Page (Source: Salesforce)
The next Salesforce release is upon us, and with a new release comes a new API version… API Version 54 to be exact. So, we take a look at the Spring ’22 Release for Developers, what are the key features and changes we need to know to be ‘release ready’?
Let’s dive into the Spring ’22 Release, and see some of the key features heading our way which may be relevant for you and your development team(s).
Sandbox Previews have commenced, and the rollout globally should be completed within the next four weeks. With the Spring ’22 Release available for some orgs this weekend (14th Jan 22). Most orgs will receive it on the weekend of the 4th Feb or 11th Feb:
Key Dates (US date format), for Salesforce’s Spring ’22 Release (Source: Salesforce)
Spring ’22 Release: Enforced Release Updates
Starting off, let’s take a look at the Release Updates which will be enforced as part of the release.
General Salesforce Platform/Security Updates:
Enforce CORS Allowlist for Lightning Apps The CORS allowlist in Setup isn’t currently enforced for Lightning apps on the server, although it’s enforced on the browser. This update enforces the allowlist on the server so that disallowed requests are blocked earlier and not processed on the server.
Login Credentials Using URL Query Strings Are Disabled To improve security, users can no longer log in to Salesforce by using a username and password as URL query string parameters to the login URL. Any users who try to do so are redirected to the login page.
Require Multi-Factor Authentication for Logins to Subscriber Orgs With this update, we secure access to subscriber orgs by requiring multi-factor authentication (MFA) when logging into the License Management Org (LMO). MFA is required only for LMO users who require access to the Subscriber Support Console.
Enable Visualforce Expression Language Apex Method Access Modifier Enforcement When accessing Apex methods defined by custom controllers, the Visualforce Expression Language doesn’t correctly validate the access modifiers of the method. Developers can sometimes access unauthorized data on managed and system classes. To improve security, this update validates the Apex method access modifier and throws an error if the Visualforce Expression Language can’t access it.
And looking forward, remember to also review and start preparing for the enforced Release Updates in the Summer ’22 release, which is due for release around mid June 2022 for most orgs.
The key Release Update that is planned for Summer ’22 is the retirement of legacy APIs – this will only impact older orgs. But the headline: if your org is using API version 7 to 20 for SOAP, REST, or BULK APIs – you’re going to need to plan and make changes before the Summer ’22 release.
Spring ’22 Release for Developers: Key Features/Changes
Now let’s turn our attention to some of the new features being introduced.
This list is in no particular order and I am focussing more of general platform items that may apply more broadly. So product specific changes for Marketing Cloud/Wave/etc aren’t listed, as always please refer to the Release Notes for a complete list.
Workflow Rules & Process Builder Phased Retirement:
As per the announcement last year that Process Builder and Workflows will be retired. Salesforce has launched a beta of the new ‘Migrate to Flow’ Tool, aimed at helping Admins and Developers migrated existing Workflows to Flow.
Spring ’22 Release for Developers: New banner in Workflows, and accessing ‘Migrate to Flow’ tool (Source: Salesforce)
Lightning Web Components (LWC):
Enable Third-Party Integrations with Light DOM
There is a new beta feature being introduced to give developers and integrations more control of the DOM. Salesforce is introducing the ability to render LWC via the Light DOM. By default Salesforce LWCs render in the Shadow DOM which presents developers some challenges re: global styling and third-party integrations.
With this beta, we can now set the renderMode static field in your component class.
Read the release notes for this beta feature here – as they outline how to use this new feature, and highlights a number of considerations about when you should/shouldn’t use it.
Secure Your Components Better, Stronger, Faster with Lightning Web Security
Lightning Web Security aims to replace Lightning Locker for Lightning web components. LWS works along with Lightning Locker, which is still used for Aura components.
Spring ’22 Release for Developers: Lightning Web Security is generally available via Session Settings (Source: Salesforce)
LWC – New Module:
lightning/uiRelatedListApi (Beta)
This new module includes new wire adapters to get records, metadata, and record count for a related list.
getRelatedListRecords—Returns record data for a related list.
getRelatedListInfo—Returns metadata for a related list.
getRelatedListsInfo—Returns metadata for multiple related lists.
getRelatedListCount—Returns the record count for a related list.
This component introduces a new method openInlineEdit() allowing developers to programmatically change an editable focused field to edit mode from an external element such as a button. There are also some additional column properties introduced in this release.
To see this change in action, you can pop over here to read more.
getAssociateEntityType() method returns an associated object of a specified parent but only if it’s a specific associated object type
getAssociateParentEntity() method returns an associated object but only if it’s associated to a specific parent object
The example provided in the developer documentation highlightsAccount &Account History: Invoking the method on AccountHistory returns the parent object as Account and the type of associated object as History
Also another addition of note is relating to the System Namespace.
With a number of new Classes and Methods added in this release to help with hostnames and domains which are used within your org. This will reduce the need to create ‘workaround’ methods to calculate domain/hostnames when dealing with Lightning, sandbox names or Experience Cloud hostnames from within an org.
System.Domain class: getDomainType() method returns the type of domain getSandboxName() method returns the name of the associated sandbox.
System.DomainCreator class: getLightningHostname() method returns the hostname for your org’s Lightning pages getExperienceCloudSitesHostname() method returns the hostname for the system-managed domain for your org’s Experience Cloud sites
System.DomainParser class: parse(hostname) method to parse a Salesforce owned hostname for your org, such as MyDomainName.my.site.com parse(url) method to parse a Salesforce URL for your org, such as https://MyDomainName.my.site.com
System.Test class: As mentiond below in Security, there is a new method introduced calculatePermissionSetGroup()
There is a change to improve the consistency of results and reduces errors when using this function in Apex.
Security Related:
Test Permission Set Groups with the calculatePermissionSetGroup() Method Modify and recalculate permission set groups in Apex tests using the calculatePermissionSetGroup() method in the System.Test class. With this method you can force a calculation of aggregate permissions on a permission set group (PermissionSetGroup object) during a deployment.
This feature, which replaces the Hide Personal Information setting, secures more personal identifiable information (PII) user record fields. You can also decide which custom and standard user fields are considered PII.
This update is available in Spring ’22 under Release Updates.
Create HTTPS Hyperlinks by Default When you save content in Salesforce that contains a URL without a protocol, Salesforce converts it to a hyperlink by assigning the HTTPS protocol. For example, if you type example.com in a Chatter post, Salesforce converts it to https://example.com when you save the post. Previously, Salesforce assigned the HTTP protocol for hyperlinks. If a link requires the HTTP protocol, enter the http:// prefix as part of the URL.
So it has been a ‘funny’ old year hasn’t it? It is fair to say, 2020 hasn’t gone as expected. Regardless for us as a Salesforce community, and as Salesforce experts – each release brings the tantalising prospect of new features and benefits for us to roll out in our orgs.
The coming days we will see details regarding Winter 21 Release from Salesforce, with the release notes due out today (US time though).
Courtesy of Salesforce, we now know the key dates for Winter ’21 – to help us be prepared for the upcoming release:
Salesforce Winter ’21 Release – Key Dates
The key dates for Winter 21 Release:
August 20: Pre-Release Org Sign Up
August 24: Release Notes
September 11: Sandbox Preview Starts
September 11: Release Site & Release Module
September 14: Release Overview Deck & Feature Matrix
September 18-September 25: Release Readiness Live!:
September 18, October 9, October 16: Release Weekends (org dependant)
October 2020: Global Release Webinars
April 2021: Release Exam Deadline on Trailhead
Please note, these dates will be US timezone based… So for us in the rest of the world, we need to adjust accordingly.
When will Salesforce Winter ’21, be released?
Looking at the Salesforce schedule above, most orgs will likely get Winter ’21 Release in mid-October.
The earlier Sept date will likely be for a handful of NA server-based orgs.
Remember you can check you specific release date via the Salesforce Trust site.
Winter ’21: Sandbox Preview Schedule
For your sandboxes, Sept 11 is the key date to keep in mind.
Between now and September 11, 2020,we’ll route all sandbox requests to preview instances. If your sandbox is complete in time for the major release on September 11, 2020, we’ll upgrade it to the newest version of Salesforce.
On September 11, 2020, we will reset all incomplete sandbox requests to a non-preview instance and route pending and new sandbox requests to non-preview instances until you upgrade your production instance to Winter ’21. We need to do this because we’re only able to create sandboxes on the same major release version of Salesforce as the production org.
The Summer ’20 Release is coming our way, but it is safe to safe, it has been a crazy couple of months to start 2020…
Salesforce has even had to shuffle the offical release date, allowing for a little bit extra time for business, admins and the to get to terms with the large-scale affect COVID-19 has had.
But as they say, ‘the show must go on’.
And today, the Salesforce’s Summer ’20 Release Notes have now been published, we can now dive under the hood to see what the top features are!
Summer ’20 Release: Timeline
May 4th – Release notes are published
May 29th – Sandbox refresh deadline/cutoff date, to ensure your sandbox gets early access to Summer ’20 features. You can use the Sandbox Refresh Calculator to help you check your sandbox environments.
June 12th & July 10th – Some early access instances of Salesforce will get the Summer ’20 release.
July 17th-18th – Most Salesforce environments will get the release over this weekend.
Top Features of Summer ’20 Release
Historically, Summer releases from Salesforce tend to generally focus on the usability side of the equation.
Summer ’20 seems to also fit that mould, with a large focus in Sales/Service Clouds on general productivity improvements to improve how users can interact with Lightning… So here are some of the top features coming our way.
Sales Cloud
Opportunity Scoring has some general improvements, increasing consistency and only display access to Scoring Factors a user has access to.
Some general tweaks to Opportunity Splits, Territory Management and ability to create Orders without Pricebooks
Additional Email Insight now available, showing if a customer has indicated they are ‘Not Interested’
Email Insight showing customer is ‘Not Interested’
And lastly, Record Detail now available while using Kanban view:
Record Details available in Kanban view
Service Cloud
Service Cloud also gets a number of updates to its feature list:
Related Record lookup, allowing agents to navigate up to 2 levels of record relationships within Salesforce. (ie directly access the Account of a Contact, which is linked to a case).
Knowledge Sharing (available in beta). Allowing you to define sharing rules like standard/custom objects in Salesforce, instead of via Data Categories.
And, Einstein Recommended Response is now Generally Available:
Einstein Replies in Summer 20, now ‘Generally Available’ and out of Beta.
Salesforce CMS
A number of new features are coming out way, if you are a Salesforce CMS user, including:
And Split View, is now available for objects outside of Tasks/Events/Calendar…
Lead with Split View
Flow, Flow, Flow
And finally, deserving of its very own section… Flow!
After receiving a fair amount of attention in Spring 20 Release, Flow continues to push the boundaries between Admin versus Developer!
One-Stop Shop for Automation: Starting a Flow
As part of the change, the trigger points for a Flow have been brought ‘in-house’. No longer requiring a trigger/apex or Process Builder to start the flow.
Along with being able to start Flows directly, and Admin can also choose if they are run before or after a record has been created or edited!
For example, this would allow you to update field values on the record BEFORE it is saved to the database. Need to override a specific field when criteria is met? You can now do this via Flow!
You can now configure how/when a Flow starts, within Flow Builder.
Admins, can also configure a flow to start directly if a Platform Event is received.
To also recognise these changes, you can also use the Flow Wizard to select the new ‘type’ of Flow:
New Flow Templates in Salesforce, as part of Summer ’20 Release
Debugging a Flow, gets a little easier too. With the ‘Rollback Mode’, allowing you to undo any record changes that were made as part of debugging a Flow:
Flows: Now with Rollback Mode
And Flows now also have the ability to run, as a ‘System User’.
One use case for this would be to allow the Flow to ignore Sharing Rules within your org.
‘System Context’ now available in Flow! Use with care…
I can’t wait to get my hands on some of these Flow improvements!
What are your favourite features?
With the Summer 20 Release fast approaching, share in the comments below what you are looking forward to the most…
For most of us now, the holiday season is behind us, and Salesforce Spring ’20 Release is almost here. With less than a month to go, let’s take a quick look at the latest release from Salesforce.
When is Spring 20 release scheduled?
For most environments globally, you can expect Spring 20 release on the weekend of Feb 14th 2020.
To check the date and schedule time of the release for you specific org, you can check the Maintenance Calendar. Just scroll through the list and check your Salesforce instance against the release dates listed in the calendar.
Top Features of the Spring 20 Release
In the Salesforce release cycle, it is the Spring releases which typically deliver refinements and usability improvements. And Spring 20 is no exception.
Let’s jump in and take a look at what is coming out way.
Opportunity Scores using Einstein Opportunity Scoring
Spring ’20 Release will see Salesforce start to roll out some of Einstein features at no extra cost for existing Sales Cloud users.
Introducing Einstein Opportunity Scoring!
It is a nice way to get a bit of a taster, of the benefits Einstein AI can bring to your org.
Spring 20: Einstein Opportunity Scoring now available for free
Einstein Voice Assistant (Beta)
While we are talking about Einstein, Einstein Voice Assistant is now also available to customers in beta.
You can create specific skills for use with Einstein Voice Assistant, or use default ones such as: Log a Call, Create Contacts or Update Opportunity.
To watch a video overview of Einstein Voice Assistant in action:
Einstein Voice
Einstein Voice Assistant
Merge Cases
One thing which has been missing from ‘out of the box’ Salesforce for a very long time – yet offered on a lot of other service ticketing platforms (like Zendesk) – was the ability to merge cases.
We saw the beta release in Summer 19 release. But it is now promoted to ‘generally available’, meaning it is ready for prime time now!
It has been a few years now, without the ability to create a new record and pre-populate field values via a custom button and the URL (often referred to as URL hacking in the Salesforce community).
The only way was a Quick Action, and prepopulating the fields via the Action Layout.
But now, Salesforce has created a way to recreate this Admin favourite way of creating a new record with values pre-populated.
Admins: Read more here on how to create a button/link using this new feature.
For developers out there, this is also accompanied by a change to the way to you create/navigate in your components, with new lightning/pageReferenceUtils module and lightning:pageReferenceUtils Aura component. Although this won’t be available in LightningOut/Lighting Communities.
Devs: Read more here re: Navigate Users to a Record’s Create Page with Default Field Values
Change Lightning Experience with the Lightning Extension for Chrome
Salesforce, in Dark Mode? Yes please!
As part of Spring 20, Salesforce has published a Chrome extensions allowing users to take advantage of a few new UI features, such as Dark Mode, Link Grabber and Component Customisation.
No doubt, this is the start of new user specified customisations you can allow and enable for your users who want it…
Spring 20 Release: Settings for Lightning Extension for Chrome
Clone Objects and Related Records
Cloning records helps speed up the creation of new records, but when you have to then recreate child records – you aren’t saving that much time.
Classic previously allowed certain records on certain objects to be cloned with their child records. Like Opportunities with Products, for example.
But Lightning will see this new Clone with Related available across more objects, and allow you to pick and choose which related records are relevant to your new record.
While not the most obvious of changes when reading the release notes, behind the scenes Winter ’20 Release brings new Salesforce Mobile App which aligns the mobile experience with Lightning Experience on desktop. Let’s take a quick look at what you can expect, and how to make the transition a smooth one for your users.
Why the change?
The short answer is, that Salesforce1 (or Salesforce Mobile) hasn’t changed much since it was released in late 2014.
The slightly longer answer though adds a bit more nuance. After Salesforce1 brought in a new way of navigation and accessing your data, Salesforce then turned its focus to building out a new desktop experience, which ultimately led to Lightning Experience.
Before this, users were able to use the Salesforce1 app via their desktop instead of using what is now referred to as Salesforce ‘Classic’ UI. The main benefit of this was to test how something would look on Mobile or to use it via browser on an iPad or similar device.
But with Lightning Experience, Salesforce has had its hands full migrating all products and features over, and ensuring improvements were delivered. Certain elements were similar across mobile and desktop now, so there wasn’t a huge need to update/refresh.
That was until late last year, when Salesforce and Apple announced a strategic partnership. With the partnership aiming to integrate voice commands (ie Siri) with Salesforce Mobile and rollout a Salesforce SDK for developers, which integrates with Swift (the preferred programming language on Apple devices).
Introducing the new Salesforce Mobile App
And so, here we are – with a new Salesforce Mobile App heading our way.
The primary focus of the app appears to integrate the mobile vs desktop experiences further. This will allow for more admin control over what is made available to users, with mobile navigation introducing the App Launcher:
App Launcher coming soon to new Salesforce Mobile App.
Key improvements to navigation:
Navigation Bar at the bottom of screen will now feature Favourites, Search and Notifications . This is a change from the global / quick actions.
App Launcher finally appears on Salesforce Mobile. Allowing users to select standard/custom apps, and display the related tabs.
Personalisation of Nav Bar, will be reflected for users on Lightning Experience (aka Desktop) and Mobile App.
What other changes are coming?
Changes to Page Layouts are also included, and now the same page will display for Lightning Experience or Mobile App. Admins will only need to create one page now.
What does this mean in the real world? It means you will have control to hide components which don’t make sense on either desktop or mobile experience.
Voice Commands
“Hey Siri, show me my dashboard.” and now Siri will actually listen… With the new Salesforce Mobile App opening up your dashboard page.
The new Salesforce Mobile App will also (and obviously) tie into the recently announced Einstein Voice and Einstein Platform Services, which will allow users to dictate notes, get Einstein recommended updates, etc on Apple/Google/Alexa devices.
What do you need to do?
This new mobile experience is opt-in, so even if users get the new mobile app – from the App Store/Play Store – without the new permissions, they will not experience any changes.
Salesforce has given control to admins to prepare for the transition, similar to Lightning Experience Transition.
From a high level, Salesforce recommend the following steps:
Key take-away here is Admins can specify users access to new Mobile Experience, allowing you to test out new pages/apps/etc before general rollout to your users
This should become available globally, starting from October 14th 2019. Users will
Additionally the new User Permissions will be available as part of Winter ’20 release, which should be rolled out globally (for majority of orgs) by the 14th October.
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.
Even Astro loves Lightning Experience…
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
For most orgs, there is less than a month left for the Winter 2020 Release from Salesforce. Are you release ready? In this post we will cover the top features of the Release and confirm release dates for the Winter 2020 Release from Salesforce.
Winter ’20 Release: Note for all Admins
Let’s talk Lightning Experience migration before we look at the features coming your way…
From October 2019 Salesforce is going to start to migrating all orgs globally to Lightning Experience by default for all users who are “Lightning-enabled”.
No doubt, this is the start of Salesforce’s push for all customer’s to use Lightning and is a good opportunity to prepare and migrate if you haven’t already.
Who are “Lightning-enabled” users?
This update applies to users who have the “Lightning Experience User” permission.
By default this includes all users with standard profiles.
Additionally any users with custom profiles or permission sets that have the Lightning Experience User permission enabled.
It is worth noting here, that any custom profiles created before Winter ’16 don’t include the Lightning Experience User permission. Though starting with Winter ’16, custom profiles that were cloned from a standard profile inherited the user permission, but admins can edit the profile to disable the permission.
Can users still switch back to Salesforce Classic?
Yes, if permissions on the profile allow. Remember, as admins you can limit the ability of users to switch back to Classic via profile/permission set.
Though once a week, Lightning–enabled users who are working in Salesforce Classic are automatically logged in to Lightning Experience. These users can switch back to Salesforce Classic as needed.
Read more on via the release notes here. And if you would like assistance, CirrusRed Consulting can help you with this transition, so contact us.
Winter ’20 Release Top Features for Sales & Service Cloud
Einstein Forecasting and Quarterly Forecasting
Einstein Forecasting supports for Quarterly Forecasting is now out of beta and generally available.
Einstein Forecasting now supports Quarterly Forecasting (Winter 20 Release)
As part of Winter 20, you will now be able to also share Knowledge Articles across more Support Channels (Social Customer Service, Chat, or Messaging), helping to reduce time your agents when resolving cases.
These two vital objects have now been extended and as of Winter ’20 release can now support custom fields, triggers, workflows.
The benefit here is you can now modify these objects (which were very limited previously) to fit your specific business processes.
Account Team Member object now available in Process Builder (Winter 20 Release)
Activities and Tasks
One of the pain points for a lot of users has been how Salesforce Lightning manages the Activity Timeline on a record page. Specifically older archived tasks.
There are three productivity improvements in this release aimed to improve sales and service productivity within Lightning.
Mark as Complete in Single Click
A very simple improvement, but one that should save end users a lot of extra clicks each day. You now have the ability to Mark as Complete, tasks from the various Task list views.
Additionally, the Load More Activities button has been removed. Instead Activities are now grouped into monthly periods to organise and view past activity:
Get ready for the next release from Salesforce, with Summer ’19 Release just around the corner. What new features are in store for your org and when can you access it? In this post we will take a look at the top new features for admins, so read on to find out more.
Salesforce Summer ’19: Top Features
Overall, most of the features in this release seem to be geared towards general improvements to the Lightning UI.
A lot of this release feels like it is further ‘sanding back’ some of the edges of Lightning and improving productivity further for users.
The ‘Summer’ release from Salesforce, does historically tend to be more focused on general improvements. And this year is no exception…
Why? Well, keep in mind this is the release before Dreamforce (where a lot of the new and big features tend to be announced). And most of the Dreamforce announcements tend to be piloted/beta released in Winter or Spring, obviously depending on the dev teams progress…
With that said, let’s take a look at the top features for Sales/Service Cloud in Summer ’19 release.
Lightning Transition: Critical Update & Tools
As announced in Spring ’19 release, from Winter ’20, any user which has the Lightning Experience permission will be automatically switched over to Lightning UI.
So as part of Summer ’19 (the last release before Winter 20), there are a number tools and updates to support Admins this transition.
There are a number of tools and tweaks which help, and they are outlined here.
These aren’t ‘sexy’ features, but they will help with your transition if you are still planning on the move.
Related Lists in Lightning
Summer ’19 brings with it a few tweaks to List Views in Lightning.
First up, we have ‘Enhanced Lists’. “A what?” I hear you ask… An Enhanced List will now allow for up to 10 columns to be displayed in Lightning (rather than the previous limit of 4).
Enhanced Lists also allow for columns to be resized… YAY!
A normal Related List (top) vs an ‘Enhanced’ Related List (bottom)
Quick Filters on Related Lists
When viewing ‘all records’ from a related list, you will now have Quick Filters available.
Speed Up your List View Search
Previous releases introduced the ability to search within a List View, allowing you to speed up the process of finding what you were looking for. Though they didn’t support picklist values, only text.
Well Summer ’19 release fixes that, and picklist values on a record will also be searched if using the List View search feature.
Keep the Record Context when switching UI
Another minor but useful tweak, when switching between Lightning UI or Classic (and vice versa), the record context will be remembered.
This means for example, when you switch to Lightning from an Opportunity record within Classic UI – you will now be taken to the relevant record you were on but in Lightning UI (if it is available).
Search Results That Reflect How You Navigate
Another one for usability, how you navigate in Salesforce will be used to present to you the Search results from the Global Search, including any personalisations the user has made to Navigation Bar.
This is quite an interesting tweak, and should help once again speed up the process of finding what you are looking for within Salesforce.
Sales & Service Cloud – Core Improvements
A number of the feature improvements for Sales and Service Cloud ‘Core’, are bringing in a number of features to increase feature parity between Lightning and Classic. And as a result, closes out the list of features not available in Lightning.
You can now enable and setup this object like any other, and create custom fields, buttons, validations, triggers, etc.
Sales Cloud: Quotas Now in Setup Menu (in Collaborative Forecasts)
Collaborative Forecasting has also FINALLY received the ability to edit and setup Quotas for Forecasting Users via the Setup menu. Gone is the need to update and add quotas via API / Dataloader.
Quotas for Collaborative Forecasts is now available in Setup, thanks to Summer ’19 Release
This spells the end-of-the-line for Customisable Forecasting (the earlier version), which Salesforce has also announced will be retired after Summer ’20 (next year).
Sales Cloud: Enterprise Territory Management
Another one that has finally made it to Lightning, is Enterprise Territory Management, with the relevant object now showing in Object Manager within Lightning.
And remember you can also forecast against territories in Lightning too. With Summer ’19 adding a new way to view your team’s Territory Forecasts.
It is a feature that has been available in competing platforms for quite a while, but never the less a very handy feature to clean-up your cases.
And if you have used the Merge Accounts feature, it will look very similar to you…
Merge Cases option, available in Summer ’19 Release (beta)
And the merge wizard allows you to pick the fields to keep/retain as you merge cases together.
Service Cloud: Improvements to Lightning Flows (aka Guided Action List)
Another product has changed names, with Guided Action List becoming the new Lightning Flows. But the change also brings with it a few changes and improvements too.
Actions and Recommendations now available on additional objects.
When will Summer ’19 Release be available?
As we enter May, the Summer ’19 Release may already be available in a number of pre-release orgs and sandboxes.
As per Salesforce’s blog, we have now passed the May 3rd cut-off date for sandboxes to be refreshed to gain access to the preview release.
Production orgs will start to receive the release from this week (May 8th) for some US instances. And for everyone else, we will receive it either June 8th, and June 15th.
