The Salesforce Spring ’23 Release Notes are out, and they include important features for Salesforce administrators and marketers who are on the platform.
We get three major releases from Salesforce each year — Spring, Summer and Spring. Each Salesforce release includes upgrades and enhancements that affect Salesforce orgs in different ways.
So, if you’re a Salesforce Admin or if you’re managing marketing operations for your company or organization and want to know more about Salesforce CRM, then you’re in the right place. We’re going to cover everything you need to know about the Salesforce Spring ‘23 Release if you’re an admin or a marketer who uses Salesforce.
14 Platform Highlights from the Salesforce Spring ‘23 Release
The theme I see in this release is about efficiency and clarity. Whether it is for users working in Salesforce or administrators building declarative solutions. If our teams can quickly get the right information at the right time, the whole organization will benefit. With that, here are 14 highlights.
Highlight #1: Create Personalized Report Filters
The addition of relative filtering for Owner fields in reports will allow admins and managers to build one report for their teams to see the records they are related to. Any field that relates to a user can use this feature. Think things like “Show me Cases where I was the last person to Modify” or “Show me Opportunities that I don’t own but Created” 
This will also reduce technical debt built up by workarounds (i.e. custom formula checkbox fields to show logged in users). I dream of a day that we can find this feature on List Views, too.
Highlight #2: Subscribe to More Reports and Dashboards
As soon as customers see the power of report and dashboard subscriptions, they crave more. For companies with Unlimited edition, users will be able to schedule 15 reports and dashboards. The previous limit was 7 reports and 7 dashboards. That’s a 53% increase!
Highlight #3: Track Field History for Activities
Finally in Spring ‘23, we’ll be able to track field history on Activities and Tasks. This has been a pain point for many admins that left them scratching their heads and wondering WHY can’t I see all of the people who passed the assignment of this Task around? Sadly there is a limit of 6 fields for tracking. Note, once activated, the Task History related list is added by default to the standard Task and Activity page layouts but needs to be manually added to any custom layouts.
Highlight #4: See More Records in Dynamic Related Lists
Dynamic related lists are truly an amazing enhancement to related lists in Lightning which allow admins to set dynamic conditions on what appears in a related list. The latest enhancement bring parity with standard related lists with the introduction of the View All link so users can see all related records rather than the current limit of just 30 on screen. Kudos to the development team for bringing this Idea to life!
Highlight #5:Convert Processes to Flows with the Migrate to Flow Tool
Admins will have a new tool in their toolbox to help with the migration of old Processes built with Process Builder over to Flows. This is great news for orgs that have many vital processes, but don’t forget that when Salesforce deprecates a feature, it is a chance to take a step back and determine if those old automations still make sense for the business today. Don’t just lift and shift!
Highlight #6: Capture Inclusive Data with Gender Identity and Pronouns Fields
Any time Salesforce takes a step towards greater inclusivity and representation, I am all for it. Spring 23 will introduce new Pronouns and Gender Identity fields as optional picklist fields on the Lead, Contact, and Person Account objects. Just update the field visibility settings and add them to the layouts to start.
Highlight #7: Prevent Duplicate Cases with Lightning Threading in Email-To-Case
Lightning threading is a new Email-to-Case threading approach that matches incoming emails to cases using a combination of token- and header-based threading. What’s great about this new technology is it helps with a major pain point that Support teams and admins face with duplicate cases on incoming emails. Previously with the Case thread-id when a customer removed the unique thread I’d from their reply, a new Case would be created.
Highlight #8: Shrink Outgoing Emails and Include Only New Content
Any support rep will know what a great improvement this is. When sending emails from Salesforce Cases, we will no longer reach size limits for outgoing emails (if they include new content only). It’s as simple as your admin checking a new box in the Email-to-Case setup.
Highlight #9: See Element Descriptions on the Flow Canvas
Sometimes Flows can get big and yes, confusing. The next release will see a great “quality of life” improvement with the new Element Descriptions. Flow developers will no longer have to click in and open up an element to see the description. We all know it is best practice to fill out the description when given the chance and this might give more incentive to do that!
Highlight #10: Select a Value from a List of Choices with the Choice Lookup Component (Beta)
For those jumping in on this Beta, they will see a set of features in this new Screen Flow component that is part “type ahead” functionality and part filter. Essentially you can set up a collection of choices for certain fields (picklists, record lookups) which will become searchable as a user interacts with the Screen. Will be very useful in cases where there are many values in a picklist but only a handful are relevant to the Flow at hand.
Highlight #11: Collaborative Forecast Modernization
I’m really excited that Salesforce is giving Collaborative forecasts some love in this release. There are 2 items to note.
Experience a Modern Forecasts Page
There is a reimagining of the whole Forecast experience that is designed to make navigating and reviewing the Forecast more intuitive for Sales leaders and sales people.
Build Custom Forecasts Pages That Work for Your Business
Here we will see the Forecast Lightning page gain the ability to customize with components similar to other object Lightning pages using the Lightning App Builder interface. A great step forward!
Highlight #12: Take Action More Quickly in the Dynamic Activity Composer
Sticking with the theme of greater access to key information and actions, the Dynamic Activity Composer packs features in each of the tabs in this new interface. For example, for those that have multiple email fields on Contact, the email tab allows more choices for which email to send to. Another cool addition is the ability to add to a To Do list Task from the Email and Call tabs.
Highlight #13: DevOps Center (Generally Available)
With the general release of Salesforce DevOps Center admins will have a robust set of dev ops tools for release management. Key features include automatic change tracking with source control, easy to migrate changes with clicks and enhanced environment management with sandbox swapping.
Highlight #14: Enhance Case and Lead Record Pages with Dynamic Forms
Here’s another great push into accessibility of Dynamic Forms for standard objects with the introduction of this feature for Cases and Leads (joining Accounts, Contacts, Person Accounts, and Opportunities). Dynamic Forms allow individual fields to be placed in a field section component anywhere on the Lightning Page for a highly customized experience. Those sections can be access controlled with filter rules. With this update, admins will be able to fine tune their Case and Lead pages for better efficiency and visibility of key information.
Salesforce is getting bigger and better all the time
Salesforce Administrators and B2B marketers who come to Salesforce are usually looking to scale their efforts and grow in a way that makes sense. Additionally, they want to make the experience of the users frictionless. These latest enhancements from the Salesforce Spring ‘23 Release get admins and marketers closer to those goals by saving them time and resources. Contact the team at Sercante to get help implementing these enhancements in your Salesforce org. And leave us a comment below to let us know what you think about the Spring ‘23 Release.
