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:
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.
From Salesforce’s Sandbox Preview page:
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.