Salesforce Winter ’24 Release: What You Need to Know
With the arrival of the Salesforce Winter ’24 release, we’re seeing lots of enhancements (read: AI) , new features, and tweaks that aim to make life easier for both developers and end-users. In this blog post, we cover the most crucial changes within the platform, so that whether you’re an admin, developer, or regular Salesforce user, you’ll walk away with a list of key points to help you navigate these changes.
TL;DR
The Salesforce Winter ’24 release brings numerous enhancements and new features for developers and users. Users can enjoy the new Intelligence View for contact and lead activities, improved accessibility with better icon color contrast, and more. Admins can take advantage of features like Einstein Activity Capture reporting, MFA auto-enablement, enhanced permission set management, and improved flow capabilities. Developers will find changes in the setup domain, NFC readability, biometrics integration, and others.
Overall, this release will provide significant improvements in quality of life for Admins, Consultants, and Devs; making implementations easier and more scalable, reducing the need for building hyper-custom solutions, and facilitating integration with other platforms while enhancing the UIs for users.
For Users
🔎 Explore the New “Intelligence View”: Contact and Lead home now provide more than just list views. The Intelligence View allows us to view contact/lead activities, take action, and update records, all in one place.
🎨 Enhanced Accessibility: Salesforce has improved accessibility on the platform with better icon color contrast.
For Admins
🧾 Einstein Activity Capture Reporting: Activities captured by it can now be reported on in standard reports, making reporting more insightful. Additionally, several email productivity tools, such as send later, email tracking, text shortcuts, and email engagement, are now free.
🔐 MFA Auto-Enablement and Enforcement: Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) auto-enablement continues, as MFA enforcement begins with Summer ’24. So, ensure proper enablement for your users- if you have not enabled it yet.
⚙️ Simplified Permission Set Management: Manage Object/Field Permissions and Permission Set Groups more efficiently with the new Beta Permission Set View. Bonus: you can also see the API Names of Fields and Objects on permission sets.
🐛 Troubleshoot with Ease: Troubleshoot errors more easily with the “Recalculate“ button in Permission Set Groups.
↔️ Dashboard Ownership Transfer: Dashboards can now have their ownership transferred, eliminating the need to clone them.
🔀 Enhanced Flow Capabilities: Flows now have a “Transform“ element, allowing you to cast data to various types, use formulas to transform them, and much more.
🔁 Build Reactive Flows: Reactivity is now live and out of beta, so gone are the days of asking a Dev to build an LWC to reactivity. Start building amazing flows with the support of Global Variables, Selections, more Formulas, and Display Text (in beta) components.
🧬 Retain Values in Flows: You can now recover from an error, paused flow, and go back to the previous page without losing the previous values in that screen.
❎ Custom Error Messages: Enhance your trigger flows with custom error messages, simplifying error handling without complex validations. Meaning that you can now forget about intricate flag field validation rules or asking for a dev to an error on an Apex Trigger.
🌐 Streamlined API Integration: Let go of complex Apex integrations and start connecting with APIs using the new HTTP Callout action in Flows.
♻️ Simplified Flow Management: You can now save flows without configuring all the elements upfront- note that you’re still not going to be able to activate them, of course.
For Developers
🔗 Setup Domain Migration: Salesforce Setup is being moved to a different domain. If your company uses an allowlist, be sure to send them an email to avoid getting locked out of the system.
📶 Enhanced LWC Offline Capabilities: Developers can now leverage NFC Readability and Biometrics Integration using Lightning Web Components (LWC) Offline. Additionally, you can now attach images to records, as well as search for records offline on mobile.
🆔 Salesforce ID Structure Update: Salesforce IDs have undergone a minor structural change, with server ID’s characters increasing from 2 to 3, affecting one of the previously reserved characters.
📋 Retirement of Full APEX Autocomplete: Full APEX Autocomplete is being retired from the developer console due to its resource-intensive nature. Which is a small step toward fully retiring the dev console.
With the Salesforce Winter ’24 release, Salesforce continues to prioritize user experience, administrative efficiency, and developer empowerment; paving the way for more streamlined processes, greater accessibility, and innovative enhancements.
Whether you’re a user benefiting from the Intelligence View, an Admin enjoying improved permission set management, or a Dev exploring new capabilities, this release has something for everyone.