Jordyn Jaffer

The Salesforce Winter ’25 Release Notes are out, and they include important features for trailblazers who are on the Salesforce platform. 

We get three major releases from Salesforce each year — Spring, Summer and Winter. Each Salesforce release includes upgrades and enhancements that affect Salesforce orgs in different ways. 

Each release contains a substantial amount of information on a variety of products so it can often be daunting for admins or other trailblazers to find the features that are important to them and their organization.  Our team reviewed the notes for you and highlighted the following platform features as those for you to keep your eyes on the lookout when the release hits your Salesforce environments in the coming months.

Platform Highlights from the Salesforce Winter ‘25 Release

Those who use the Salesforce platform are getting lots of attention from the Salesforce Winter ‘25 Release. 

Some updates are changing the way we work to meet evolving technology demands. Others are saving us time by connecting the dots in a logical way.  Our team will guide you through these features so you will know how to take action on them before the release hits your Production org.

Highlight #1: Verifications Needed to Continue Sending Emails From Salesforce

The Winter ‘25 release will require customers to Create and Verify Your Default No-Reply Organization-Wide Email Address to Send Email and Verify Your Return Email Address for Sender Verification in order to continue allowing Users and/or automations to send emails from Salesforce.

If you Users do utilize any email functionality within Salesforce it will be important to instruct them to visit their ‘My Email Settings’ so they can verify the email address associated with their User account.  Similarly, overall as an organization, you will need to ensure there is a customer-defined Default No-Reply Organization-Wide Email Address moving forward.

Although the Default No-Reply Organization-Wide Email Address feature will be enforced this release, the individual Return Email Address verification will not be enforced until Spring ‘25.

Highlight #2: Salesforce Archive (Pilot)

Salesforce recently announced their acquisition of Own Company, currently known as the most credible Salesforce archive and backup third-party tool, however, they have also announced a pilot of their own Archive product.  If your team needs assistance with archival management of your data but either cannot afford a third-party tool or do not have time/resources to implement one of those tools, Salesforce Archive might be a solution to consider.

When Salesforce Archive becomes generally available, you can use it in production and sandbox environments, however the product is available in sandboxes as a pilot right now and can be requested to be enabled by your AE.  The product will become available to production orgs on a rolling basis starting in November 2024, but when it’s released for production use, it will need to be purchased as an add-on license.

Highlight #3: New Salesforce Platform Login License

The Salesforce Platform Login license allows you to assign access to custom apps built on Platform for internal users without the requirement to buy a seat-based license. With the Salesforce Platform Login license, you can pay per daily unique login for users who need infrequent or occasional access. 

This new license will become available starting October 15th for customers on Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.  Contact your AE to learn more about pricing details for these new licenses and to determine if they’re a right fit for your organization.

Highlight #4: User Permissions Updates

Improvement #1: See How Object Access Is Granted in Object Manager

The Winter ‘25 release continues with updates to ensure Salesforce Administrators are able to troubleshoot their User’s access and permission issues easier. One of these new features is the ability to use the Object Access Summary in Object Manager to quickly check object permissions when troubleshooting, completing reviews, or determining how to grant user access.

Improvement #2: Get Insight into How a User’s Permissions Are Granted

Last release we were able to access a Summary of an individual’s access and permissions directly from the user details record.  This enabled you to see what a user had access to without having to spend multiple clicks checking each profile, permission set, public group, or queue.

The Winter ‘25 release expands on that feature by including an additional feature to allow you to see what grants the User that particular permissions (i.e. via Profile or Permission Set) in case you need to revoke those permissions.

Highlight #5: Salesforce Flow Updates

You may have heard the phrase “Flow is the future” in Salesforce messaging over the past few years. This is because Salesforce is consistently releasing new Flow features to support the retirement of Process Builder and Workflow Rules in recent years. 

Here are some of our favorites from this release.

Improvement #1: New Errors and Warnings Pane in Flow Builder

The new Errors and Warnings pane lists issues that prevent you from saving and activating your flow as you work in an easy to scan format. This feature will be automatically available when trying to activate a Flow with errors following the release.

Improvement #2: Flow Design Tips

Another new feature within the Winter ‘25 release is the inclusion of new tips in Flow Builder to help you identify designs that can slow down your flows and increase the risk of reaching Apex governor limits.  This may not seem like much to some of us that have been building Flows for a couple years now, but this is a game changer for new Flow builders who are uncomfortable with the tool at first.

Improvement #3: Create or Update Records Efficiently with the Create Records Element

Last release we saw the beginning of an upsert feature within Flow Builder through the release of a new way to check against duplicates for a single record.  Well the Winter ‘25 releases further enhances this feature by enabling the upsert functionality against multiple records at once.  You’re able to compare against existing records with a Salesforce Id, External Id, or other field on the object.  

The Create Records element makes the process of saving records easier and faster, as you no longer check separately for existing records because the create and update elements are now merged into one element.  Admins can now configure and maintain flows more easily while reducing potential errors from separate operations.

Improvement #4: Send Email Action Expanded

Two new enhancements have come to the ‘Send Email’ Action within Flow Builder. First, you are now able to include email addresses to include as cc or bcc on the email that is sent via the Flow. Any address entered in the CC field receives a copy of the email, and those in the BCC field also receive a copy, but their email addresses are hidden from all recipients. Secondly, there is an increase of the number of recipients you can include from originally 5 to now 150 recipients.

Highlight #6: Conditional Formatting on Record Pages

As Salesforce continues to push customers from Page Layouts to Lightning Record Pages, they continue to release new features in the Lightning App Builder to excite customers into the move.  Now customers will be able to give fields on Dynamic Forms-enabled pages custom icons and colors that can appear, disappear, and change color based on the criteria and rules that you define.  This can be a game changer for those of us who have previously created formula fields to manage or provide this functionality in the past.

Highlight #7: Account Plans

This feature is one our team is very interested in learning more about as new information is released as it can be a huge game changer for Sales teams.  The Account Plans feature provides a new UX providing a complete picture of the account with information such as metrics, objectives with actionable metrics, and tabs on growth and development, all from one repository within Salesforce.  

This feature will become available in Production on a rolling basis after the Winter ’25 release is complete and available to all customers in mid- to late November 2024.  Customers available to receive this feature are those with Enterprise, Performance, or Unlimited editions.

Once the feature becomes available in your Production org, go to the new Account Plans page in Setup and turn on Account Plans. Then, configure the Account Plans object in the Object Manager, add the Account Plans related list to the Account object, and optionally set up Relationship Maps.

Highlight #8: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Updates

Please check out my colleague Erin Duncan’s blog post on all things Pardot from the Winter ’25 release.

Additional Highlight: Marketing Cloud Growth Updates

Erin Duncan has also written posted on some exciting announcements coming to Salesforce’s newest marketing product:

• Salesforce Winter ‘25 Highlights: Marketing Cloud Growth Edition
• Announcing Marketing Cloud Advanced Edition

Salesforce is getting bigger and better all the time

Trailblazers who come to Salesforce are usually looking to scale their efforts and grow in a way that makes sense. These latest enhancements from the Salesforce Winter ‘25 Release get everyone 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 Winter ‘25 Release.

The Salesforce Winter ’23 Release Notes are out, and they include important features for marketers who are on the Salesforce platform. 

We get three major releases from Salesforce each year — Spring, Summer and Winter. Each Salesforce release includes upgrades and enhancements that affect Salesforce orgs in different ways. 

So, if you’re using and 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 Winter ‘23 Release if you’re a marketer who uses Salesforce.

Marketing-Focused Platform Highlights  from the Salesforce Winter ‘23 Release

Marketers who use the Salesforce platform are getting lots of attention from the Salesforce Winter ‘23 Release. 

Some updates are changing the way we work to meet evolving technology demands. Others are saving us time by connecting the dots in a logical way. 

All we know is, this release includes big updates for people in the marketing world.

Highlight #1: MFA Enhancement for Smaller Orgs

The Winter ‘23 release will enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for direct logins to Salesforce for orgs with fewer than 100 active users. This update will then become enforced when the Spring ‘23 release comes around early next year. 

If your Salesforce org falls under the 100 active user threshold, it’s best to make sure you are fully compliant with the MFA requirement now and make sure any MFA-exempt user types are prevented from being affected by this update.

Any Salesforce org that has more than 100 active users will experience this update in a future release.

Highlight #2: Dynamic Forms for Standard Objects

Dynamic Forms are now finally available for Accounts, Person Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities! Dynamic Forms are components you can add to your Lightning Record Page to help customize your page layouts even more. 

Instead of using the standard page layout component, you can add specific fields and sections to the Lightning Record Page and add visibility rules to show users only what they need at that time. 

You can also automate the process of creating dynamic forms by migrating the Record Detail component to a Dynamic Form component with just one button.

Highlight #3: Salesforce Reports and Dashboards Updates

Salesforce continues to ensure that Reports and Dashboards get new updates with each release throughout the year. 

Enhancement #1: Filter Custom Report Types by Salesforce Fields (Beta)

Salesforce continues to provide enhancements to help ensure users can pick the best report type for any use case. Users can now filter custom report types by specific fields to ensure that report type contains the fields needed for the report. 

This feature is extremely useful for finding the right custom report type and allows users to filter by up to 20 fields that are required for the specific report they are building.

Enhancement #2: Review a Custom Report Type’s Structure During Report Creation

When getting ready to select a custom report type, users are now able to review the structure of that report type before moving forward with creating a new report. 

The details panel for the custom report type will now include a section that shows the relationships between the joined objects and provides useful information on the outcomes of the joins that were set up for the report type.

Highlight #4: User Permissions Updates

Improvement #1: Manage Your Permission Assignments with the User Access and Permission Assistant

Previously known as the Permissions Helper, the User Access and Permissions Assistant is an app through the Salesforce AppExchange to help analyze and report on permission assignments. 

Following the Salesforce best practice to approach user management by applying the principle of least privilege, this tool can help with monitoring and managing permissions across your org. 

Some features available through this tool are:

• Analyzing permissions by user, permission set, or permission set group to understand who has a particular permission.
• Converting a profile to a permission set
• Reporting on users, permission sets, or permission set groups to further understand who has what permissions.
  • You can also report on permission dependency and visualize it so you can see everything that’s dependent on a specific permission.

Improvement #2: Set Field-Level Security for a Field on Permission Sets During Field Creation

As Salesforce moves its customers toward using Permission Sets over Profiles, it will continue to push out new updates for Permission Sets to become more powerful. 

When creating new fields on an object, you will now have the ability to set field-level security on permission sets instead of profiles to help follow security best practices.

To use this new beta feature, you should enable it through the User Management Settings in your Salesforce Setup.

Highlight #5: Salesforce Flow Updates

You may have heard the phrase “Flow is the future” in Salesforce messaging over the past couple of years. This is because Salesforce is consistently releasing new Flow features to prepare for the retirement of Process Builder and Workflow Rules in the upcoming years. 

You should anticipate seeing awesome features for Salesforce Flow being included in every release moving forward for a while.

Here are some of our favorites from this release.

Improvement #1: Cut and Paste Flow Elements

If you’ve ever had to move a Flow element from one section to another you know how frustrating it has been in the past. We were required to copy a component, paste in the new section, update any references to the old version of the component, and then delete the old component. 

Salesforce has answered this frustration by providing a new feature where you can cut and paste a Flow element that eliminates all of the extra steps of cleaning up your Flow when you move an element.

Improvement #2: Specify Time Offsets in Months for Scheduled Paths

Before the Winter ‘23 release, Salesforce users were only able to set up scheduled paths by looking at the time since a trigger in minutes, hours, or days. 

This new Salesforce feature now includes the ability to schedule your path to run on the same calendar day of another month.

Improvement #3: Use In and Not In Operations to Find Related Records

Flows are getting new operators that can be used in Get Records, Update Records, and Delete Records elements. 

These new operators, In and Not In, can help users get related records without using a Loop element and reduce the number of SOQL queries and DML statements within the Flow.

Improvement #4: Select Multiple Records from a Table in a Screen Flow (Beta)

The new Data Table screen flow component is available to display a list of records on a flow screen. When building the screen flow, you can set the table to ready only or provide your users the ability to select multiple records to use later in the flow.

Improvement #5: Use Record-Triggered Flows to Update Related Records

The Winter ‘23 release brings a new feature where you can use record-triggered flows to update any record that is related to the record that originally triggers the Flow. 

With this feature, users are also able to set filters to only update specific related records instead of all related records.

Improvement #6: Workflow Rule Creation will no longer be available

The Winter ‘23 Release will now block Salesforce users from creating any new Workflow Rules moving forward. This is the next big step toward retiring Workflow Rules entirely as Salesforce continues to push users to move toward Flows. 

This update will not affect your current Workflow Rules as you will still be able to activate, deactivate, and edit your existing automations.

Check out our other blog post on migrating your current Workflow Rules and Process Builder to Flow through the new conversion to learn more about how you can prepare for the Workflow Rule retirement.

Highlight #6: Sales Cloud for Slack (Generally Available)

Since Salesforce purchased Slack in July 2021, they have been working hard to connect these two systems in a way that will improve Sales productivity. 

This release brings a new feature where sales teams can access important information and get notifications about their accounts and opportunities directly in Slack. The new Sales Cloud for Slack app provides the ability for your sales team to collaborate in opportunity-focused channels and to automate record update notifications to be pushed into Slack directly from Salesforce.

Highlight #7: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Updates

Please check out my colleague Erin Duncan’s blog post on all things Pardot from the Winter ’23 release.

Salesforce is getting bigger and better all the time

B2B marketers who come to Salesforce are usually looking to scale their efforts and grow in a way that makes sense. These latest enhancements from the Salesforce Winter ‘23 Release get 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 Winter ‘23 Release.

The Salesforce Summer ‘22 Release Notes are out, and they include important features for marketers who are on the Salesforce platform. 

We get three major releases from Salesforce each year — Spring, Summer and Winter. Each Salesforce release includes upgrades and enhancements that affect Salesforce orgs in different ways. 

So, if you’re using and managing marketing operations for your company or organization and want to know more about Salesforce, then you’re in the right place. We’re going to cover everything you need to know about the Salesforce Summer ‘22 Release if you’re a marketer who uses Salesforce.

Salesforce Summer ’22 Release: Highlights for Marketers

Marketers who use the Salesforce platform are getting lots of attention from the Salesforce Summer ‘22 Release. 

Some updates are changing the way we work to meet evolving technology demands. Others are saving us time by connecting the dots in a logical way. 

All we know is, this release includes big updates for people in the marketing world.

Highlight #1: Enabling Person Accounts

For any organization who has considered Person Accounts, you know that you have to reach out to Salesforce Support to get them to enable Person Accounts in your Salesforce environment.

With the Summer ‘22 release, organizations are now able to enable Person Accounts on their own through Salesforce Setup. Similar to the previous process, enabling Person Accounts cannot be reversed from your Salesforce environment.

If you are looking to implement Person Accounts for your business and are looking for a partner to assist you with it, please reach out to us to find out more on how we can help you through the implementation process.

Stay tuned… we’re working on a blog about how Person Accounts work with different Salesforce products.

Highlight #2: Custom Field and Related List Updates

Improvement #1: Custom Address Field (Beta)

Salesforce Administrators have been wondering for years “how can I create a custom Address field so I can record multiple addresses on my customer records?” 

 Our questions have finally been answered with the new beta feature of creating custom Address fields on various objects. These custom fields will mimic the behavior of the standard Address fields you see on the Contact and Account objects. 

It will be interesting to see how new custom Address fields will play with Pardot if your organization decides to sync those fields over.

Improvement #2: Picklist Enhancements

Have you ever needed to inactive multiple picklist values and realize you’ll be clicking “deactive” for nearly five minutes? 

Salesforce has finally improved this process by providing the option to manage picklist values in bulk. 

This is a beta feature that you will need to enable in Setup. It gives you the option to select multiple picklist values at one time and perform various actions on those values.

There is also a new picklist feature where you can get an email sent to you if your custom picklist fields have more than 4,000 inactive values. You will then be able to bulk delete these inactive values through the feature above.

Improvement #3: Dynamic Related Lists

This is probably my favorite feature in this release. The introduction of Dynamic Related Lists will bring amazing opportunities to customize your org’s Lightning Pages. 

With this improvement, you can add the new Dynamic Related List – Single component on your Lightning Page. You’ll select the fields you would like to display, and then apply filters to ensure only certain records show in your new related list. 

You can create multiple related lists for the same object if you would like to display different groups of records, such as filtering on Opportunity Record Type.

Highlight #3: Reports and Dashboards Updates

Salesforce continues to ensure that Reports and Dashboards get new updates with each release throughout the year. Some features that were in Beta during the last release are now Generally Available, while there are new features entering the Beta phase.

Improvement #1: Find the Right Report Type for New Reports (GA)

This improvement was highlighted in our Spring ‘22 Release Article when it was a Beta feature. It is now Generally Available to all Salesforce customers.

Improvement #2: Edit Multiple Fields on the Report Run Page (GA)

Similar to the improvement above, we highlighted this feature in our Spring ‘22 Release Article when it was just a Beta feature, and it is now Generally Available to all Salesforce customers.

Improvement #3: Create Reports Based on Selected Salesforce Objects (Beta)

Have you ever had to scroll through all of your report types to try to find the ones that contain the specific object you are looking for? This new Salesforce beta feature allows you to filter the report types on the specific objects you need to ensure are in your report. 

This feature, along with Improvement #1, compliment each other in a way that will help you find the right report type faster.

Improvement #4: Use Median as a Summary Function in Reports

One of the smaller features in this release, this improvement provides the ability to summarize your fields in a report based on the median action along with the previously available actions.

Highlight #4: Salesforce Flow Updates

You may have heard the phrase “Flow is the future” in Salesforce messaging over the past couple of years. This is because Salesforce is consistently releasing new Flow features to prepare for the retirement of Process Builder and Workflow Rules in the upcoming years. 

You should anticipate seeing awesome features for Flow being included in every release moving forward for a while. And be sure to check out this solution from Mike Morris on how to manage Salesforce campaign activation with a simple flow.

Here are some of our favorites from this release.

Improvement #1: Use Formulas as Flow Entry Conditions

Flows will now have the opportunity to use formulas as entry conditions instead of just field value criteria. This improvement provides so much more flexibility then we previously had, and it’s something I am very excited to implement in my client’s Flows to help optimize them even more.

Improvement #2: Add Section Headers Screen Flows

Screen Flows will also receive a couple updates during the Summer ‘22 release. 

You will now be able to add a Section component to your Screen Element that can be collapsible to make the screen flow completion more efficient.

Along with this feature, there will be a new beta feature to place Name and Address Record fields directly on your Flow Screens. 

Through this feature, your screen flows can become even more efficient as you can have these fields populated with either existing values and even have autocomplete functionality with the Address record fields.

Improvement #3: Manage the Run Order of Flows from Flow Trigger Explorer

The Summer ‘22 release brings the ability to easily update the run order of your record-trigger flows without needing to open and edit the individual flows themselves. 

Through the easy-to-use UI, you can ensure that your record-trigger flows are executing in the exact order you specify for an individual object.

Improvement #4: Convert Workflow Rules to Flows with the Migrate to Flow Tool (GA)

Salesforce will continue to push its customers to Flow in preparation of the retirement of Process Builder and Workflow Rules. Thankfully we are provided tools to help make the migration process a lot easier than just creating flows ourselves. The Migrate to Flow Tool was already available for certain Workflow Rules in the previous release, but now supports more kinds of workflow rules. THe tool will now support the following:

• Equal to null
• Not equal to null
• Rule criteria formula

Stay tuned for a  blog post on migrating Workflow Rules and Process Builder to Flow through this tool to learn more about it. 

Highlight #5: Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot) Updates

Probably the biggest update to Pardot during the Summer ‘22 release is the name change to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement that was announced recently. 

The name will always be Pardot in our hearts and therefore deserves its own section for feature highlights from this upcoming release.

Here’s a musical tribute to the Pardot name for your listening pleasure.

Improvement #1: Conditional Completion Actions

Every Pardot Admin probably screamed with glee when they saw this feature was finally being released. We are now able to include conditions on Completion Actions to ensure that subsets of your prospects are meeting the criteria for certain completion actions. Previously we could only include completion actions that fired for each prospect that completed the asset so this improvement will help all companies enhance their marketing automation efforts.

If you want to read more information about this feature, check out Marcos Duran’s preview blog post exclusively on Conditional Completion Actions.

Improvement #2: Review Email Bounce Data in One Report 

The Summer ‘22 release will bring a single report for you to review all of the bounced email addresses from the past year for each email sent. This is a huge improvement from needing to view individual list email reports in order to find the prospects that had bounced email addresses for that email.

Check out Laura Curtis’ blog post on the Pardot Email Bounce report to learn more about this awesome feature.

Improvement #3: Get Improved Mailability Insights on List Email Reports 

The Summer ‘22 release will bring four new fields to your list email reports:

• Total Prospects on recipient lists
• Total suppressed Prospects
• Total unmailable Prospects
• Total duplicate Prospects

These new fields will provide a more accurate picture of who is receiving your emails and give you more information to help with your prospect management decisions.

Highlight #6: Marketing Cloud Updates

Please check out my colleague Kirsten Schlau’s blog post on all things Marketing Cloud from the Summer ‘22 release.

Salesforce is getting bigger and better all the time

B2B marketers who come to Salesforce are usually looking to scale their efforts and grow in a way that makes sense. These latest enhancements from the Salesforce Summer ‘22 Release get 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 Summer ‘22 Release.