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With the return of this season again, Salesforce has unveiled its latest updates in the Winter’25 Release. To improve the user experience and boost efficiency, Salesforce regularly releases its platform in three phases: Spring, Summer, and Winter. Each release adds new features and improvements.
Following this trend, now it’s time for the Winter ’25 Release which offers exciting updates that simplify processes, boost efficiency, streamline operations, and drive greater efficiency across various aspects of the Salesforce ecosystem. Here are Winter ’25 features we can look at to see what’s new and how it could impact your Salesforce experience.
Key Highlights of Salesforce Winter ’25
The Winter’25 release introduces several notable features and improvements that cover different elements and areas. Like, there have been several enhancements to the Lightning Experience, improvements have been made to Salesforce Flow, and updates to Lightning Web Component, Apex, and Experience Cloud. The Einstein Automate and Data Cloud have also been upgraded. Furthermore, Salesforce Scheduler, Field Service, and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement have been improved.
There are also updates made to Quip, CRM Analytics, Salesforce CMS, and Salesforce Payments, as well as Salesforce Connect, Salesforce Backup, and Salesforce Subscription Management. Several new features have been added to Enablement Sites, Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce Revenue Cloud, and APIs. With all these latest updates and improvements businesses can leverage the Salesforce platform more effectively to achieve their goals.
Also Read: CRM Implementation Strategies for 2024
What Features to Expect in Salesforce Winter ’25?
For Administrators:
1) Add Calculated Fields with Einstein AI
Customizing reports to fit your business’s needs has now become easier with the Einstein Report Formula Generation. This tool uses Einstein Generative AI to help users in creating row-level and summary formulas. Earlier, formula creation necessitated a deep understanding of data models, objects, fields, functions, and the limitations imposed by different types of data and formula types. Now, all you need to do now is explain your calculation in simple terms; Einstein will take care of the finer details by looking over the relevant data and providing a suitable solution.
2) Improved Flow Permissions
The Flow User checkbox has now been replaced with the Run Flows or Manage Flows permission, required for executing flows.
3) Improved Send Email Actions
Salesforce solved a prevailing issue in the Winter ’25 version by providing users more flexibility and control over email communications by enabling them to add email addresses to the CC and BCC boxes. This maintains privacy while keeping everyone in the loop.
4) Simplified Inline Edits with User List View
You can now directly make inline modifications to new entries and view, sort, and filter user records in a list format with the Enhanced User List View. With this feature, users don’t need to exit the list view to update and modify records thus making the process easier.
5) Errors and Warning Tab
The new Errors and Warning Tab centralizes error and warning handling for administrators, consolidating all issues in one location. Now, administrators don’t need to navigate between sections to examine, analyze, and fix problems.
6) Conversation Intelligence in Flows
With this new release, Salesforce Flows can now directly incorporate conversation intelligence rules, improving automation possibilities.
7) User Access Summary: Access Granted By
Administrators can now use the “Access Granted By” function to see detailed user permissions, select a certain user, and examine the origins of their access privileges.
8) Better Clarity with Description fields for Public Groups
The addition of the description field to Queues and Public Groups is a significant improvement. By providing these element descriptions, you can record their use and function, which greatly improves understanding and administration—particularly in complex Salesforce configurations.
9) Limitation for Guest Users
With this new release, guest users are no longer able to edit or delete approval requests, although they can still accept or reject requests. This adds a limitation to the guest user actions thereby improving security.
10) Upgraded Inbound Email Limits
Salesforce has implemented a cap on the number of incoming emails that can be queued once your daily email quota has been reached to preserve maximum performance. Your daily email rate limit is matched by the maximum number of emails that can be queued at this time. Emails sent in after this point will be returned as bounced.
11) Improved Action Button Functionality with Disable-Option
Salesforce earlier revealed the Action Button, which lets users initiate auto-launched flows straight from a screen. However, with the new Winter’25 release, Salesforce provides the ability to disable the Action Button, avoiding further clicks following a successful action.
12) Object Access
With the help of Object access, users can determine who can view, create, edit, or delete records for a particular object. With this new release, users can use the Object Manager in Salesforce to check who can access what.
13) Improved View of Custom Report Types
More capabilities and a more compact interface make it easy to find and build customized list views of your report types. With the updated report-style layout editor, you have more options for effectively managing sections and special fields. Moreover, you can expand the report type structure with up to 1,000 fields by using lookup fields.
14) Set Up Record Highlights in Lightning App Builder
Streamlining the process of setting up your record pages is now possible with the new Dynamic Highlights Panel, which allows you to configure the most critical information within the Lightning App Builder.
15) Save on Storage and Boost Performance with Salesforce Archive:
The Salesforce Archive solution is your native solution to unchecked data bloat, saving time and money for data-driven businesses. With periodic archive tasks, now you can automate data cleansing and view the records in your data store straight from your Salesforce organization. Records that have expired or are not in use can be archived in an external, low-cost data store. As your organization’s data volume increases, this helps in speed and efficiency optimization.
16) Test Restrictions on Salesforce Cookie Use
To ensure compatibility for users blocking third-party cookies, Salesforce now supports testing of custom functionality using a Salesforce session cookie. In orgs utilizing the new salesforce-setup.com domain, the “Require first-party use of Salesforce cookies” setting is now automatically enabled. Additionally, cross-domain cookies are enabled by default for features like content previews, email templates, and product displays while Salesforce updates these features for users with third-party cookie restrictions. You can manage this behavior with the new My Domain setting: “Allow cross-domain use of Salesforce cookies on the preview domain.”
17) Get Insight into How User’s Permissions Are Granted
Managing user permissions just got easier with enhanced visibility into the profiles, permission sets, and permission set groups that grant specific permissions to users. The User Access Summary now displays detailed information on a user’s object, field, user, and custom permissions, making it simpler to track the sources of access rights. Previously, troubleshooting permissions required multiple queries and steps; now, this insight is available with just a few clicks, streamlining user management and reducing complexity.
18) Flexible Custom App Access through Salesforce Platform Login License
For internal users, the Salesforce Platform Login license offers flexible access to custom apps developed on the Salesforce Platform. This license type is perfect for customers who need access occasionally since it avoids the requirement for seat-based licenses by letting you pay based on daily unique logins. The license for the Salesforce Platform Login will be made available on October 15, 2024.
19) Enhance Sales Team Collaboration by Assigning Opportunity Splits to Territories
Sales teams can now assign opportunity splits and product splits directly to specific territories to see how territories contribute to overall sales. Earlier, splits were associated only with the parent opportunity’s territory. This change allows sales teams to get reports that show territories’ contributions to closing deals utilizing split data plus they can also forecast based on split amounts across territories.
20) Capture Sales Forecasts with Point-in-Time Submissions
Sales representatives and managers receive an accurate picture of expected revenue or quantities for a specific forecast period through forecast submissions. These projections, which are usually submitted once a week, provide management with a snapshot in time that they may evaluate against supplied figures and quotas. By doing this, forecasts are kept updated and provide more in-depth information. Teams can provide more accurate forecasts by drawing attention to any disparities, which improves forecasting for the entire sales team and the business as well.
21) Extend the Scope of Your Enhanced CMS Content
Publishing content to Aura site channels from enhanced CMS workspaces is now streamlined with the introduction of the “Use Non-Enhanced APIs” setting, which is enabled by default for these channels. This setting allows users to leverage non-enhanced CMS Managed Content Resources to fetch content from enhanced CMS workspaces. Additionally, any new CMS workspace created is automatically enhanced by default, for a seamless content management experience.
22) Download Data Sync Job Logs in the Data Manager
Quickly diagnose issues with data sync jobs by accessing detailed job logs, now available for data syncs in addition to recipes and dataflows. Previously, job logs were limited to recipes and dataflows, but with this enhancement, troubleshooting and resolving sync issues is more efficient than ever.
Also Read: The 10 Best CRM for SaaS in 2024: Boost Your Software Sales & Growth
For Developers:
1) Build LWCs with TypeScript
Using the developer preview, users can now utilize TypeScript to create new Lightning Web Components (LWCs) using Salesforce. The purpose of this update is to improve code quality and developer productivity.
2) Free-Tier Event Tracking for Apex Exceptions
You can now use free-tier Event Monitoring access to track unhandled exceptions in Apex code execution rather than relying solely on unhandled exception emails. You can troubleshoot your Apex code more effectively by utilizing this to look at specific details recorded in event log files connected to the Apex Unexpected Exception event type.
3) Lightning Web Components: Latest Enhancements
Several Lightning Web Components have recently received updates that improve both functionality and accessibility. These upgrades aim to provide a more advanced user experience while ensuring higher adherence to accessibility guidelines.
A more focused and user-friendly experience is now offered by validation errors, which show up directly on the cell that is being changed rather than over the entire table. Also, string values like all, none, and by-column are all accepted for the wrap-table-header attribute, this lets you have more control over how table headers wrap.
4) Accelerate Lightning Web Component Development with Real-Time Preview (Beta)
With the new Local Dev (beta), you can now build Lightning web components (LWCs) while previewing your Lightning app or Experience Cloud site in real-time. As you make changes, the preview updates automatically in your browser, allowing you to iterate more quickly without the need for code deployment or refreshing manual page. Transition to this enhanced Local Dev experience for better testing and previewing, as the older LWC Local Development Server, with its limited capabilities, will be phased out.
5) Optimize Your Code with Enhanced SOQL Error Handling and Updated Functionality
Updates in this release introduce changes that may affect existing Apex code relying on legacy SOQL error messages and behavior, especially for dynamic SOQL that depends on parsing those error messages. Ensure your code is updated to align with the new standards to avoid unexpected disruptions.
6) Salesforce Flow Enhancements
Salesforce Flow has seen a few improvements, which include:
- Change a list of records from a screen by gathering user input.
- Use the Choice Lookup Component to select multiple choices.
7) Enhance Control Over Authenticated Callouts
Configuring permissions for named credentials is now more straightforward, allowing users to make authenticated callouts to external systems with ease. Previously, enabling external credential principal access required manual assignment of object permissions for User External Credentials to each permission set or profile. Now, most standard permission sets and profiles automatically include access to the User External Credentials object. For guest user profiles and existing custom permission sets or profiles, you need to still grant access to the User External Credentials object manually.
8) Optimize Performance with New Search Query Limits
To maintain fair access and safeguard against potential service disruptions, the number of search queries for each user is now limited to 5,000 and 1.4 CPU hours within a 5-minute interval. Users who exceed these limits will receive an error message.
9) Create Components with Larger JavaScript File Sizes
A Lightning web component JavaScript file can now have a maximum file size of 1 MB (1,000,000 bytes), instead of the previous 128 KB (131,072 bytes).
Beta and Pilot Updates
In addition, there are following beta and pilot improvements as well:
Beta:
- Boost Snapshot Data Recipes Performance using Advanced Append Output.
- Scale Content Delivery for High Performance.
- Control Access to Data Based on Users’ Assigned Territories.
- Get Faster Insights with Einstein Case Management.
- Get the latest features, upgrade to the enhanced LWR sites.
- Do More with Custom Report Types.
- Export from Data Cloud-connected CRM Analytics Assets.
- Give Users Read-Only Access to Recipes.
Pilot:
- Help with Flow Formulas using Einstein.
- Import Real-Time Event Monitoring Event Data into the Data Cloud.
- Einstein Article Recommendations: Empower Agents to Manage Customer Issues Quickly.
- Boost LWR Site Performance with Experience Delivery.
- Explore Your Heroku Apps in Salesforce Setup.
- Event Monitoring Platform Events Connector.
Also Read: The Guide to Salesforce Einstein Forecasting: Unlock AI-Powered Sales Accuracy
Conclusion
With the new Salesforce Winter ’25 Release, multiple noteworthy enhancements make Salesforce more manageable and easier to use. We’ve highlighted above the standout features of the Salesforce Winter ’25 release, which are set to improve the experience for users, admins, and developers by providing greater flexibility and efficiency. All these new features will help users get the most out of Salesforce.
Furthermore, organizations can ensure a seamless transition and make the most of the new capabilities by using sandbox previews, adjusting user permissions, communicating with stakeholders, and keeping track of official release notes.
If you need help navigating new release features of Salesforce or need to discuss your business needs concerning Salesforce audits and system troubleshooting, Salesforce optimization and customization, system integration, or migration, you can schedule a free consultation call and we’ll provide the ideal solution for your business.
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