We recently sat down with Rick Craig, on our TechOps team, to get the inside scoop on the top 5 updates to look out for in the upcoming SFDC Summer 2023 release. According to Rick, the Salesforce Summer 23 release notes and updates are packed with exciting features and enhancements that will revolutionize the way we work with Salesforce. From improved automation capabilities to enhanced reporting tools, this release is set to transform the Salesforce experience. Before we dive into each new feature, make sure to check the important release dates below!
Salesforce Summer 23 Release Date
Salesforce plans to introduce the Summer ’23 Release in multiple stages. We’ve listed out each relevant date to be aware of below.
- April 26: Availability of preview notes.
- May 4 & 5: Sandbox cutoff date and Sandbox upgrades. Take advantage of this opportunity to explore features related to your customizations within your sandbox. Evaluate how specific features will benefit or influence your organization’s use of Salesforce.
- May 15th: Upgrade of preview instances to Summer ’23. Admins and developers can access the highlights of the Summer ’23 release.
- June 3rd-4th: Final readiness check performed by Salesforce.
- June 10th: Production availability of the Summer ’23 Release. After the release window for your environment elapses, you will gain access to the latest features within your production environment.
Please be aware that the specific release date for Summer ’23 can vary depending on your Salesforce instance and location. The Salesforce maintenance page will confirm your release date.
Now, time to dive into Rick’s top 5 Updates:
1. Enriched Dashboards with More Filters and Media
What’s new?
- Dashboards now support up to 5 dashboard filters, up from 3
- Images and rich text can now be added to dashboards as widgets
- Widget limit is now increased to 25, up from 20, to support the addition of rich text and images
Why do we love it?
Dashboards are a great way to visualize data for multiple business units across an organization within Salesforce. Often you have many people from different departments, product teams, and organizational levels wanting to view the same dashboard. Let’s say you want to filter a lead performance dashboard by date, lead source, and territory, but the marketing team also wants to be able to filter by primary campaign, and the PM team wants to further drill down by product line. Before, you’d have to clone the dashboard and pre-filter the reports by certain criteria to share with other team members with unique needs, but now you have the additional flexibility to keep all your teams able to speak and collaborate on the same dashboard.
Not only that, but rich text and images can be used to further enhance your users’ experience. Maybe you want to create separated guidelines and paths in the dashboard with headlines for each section, or include diagrams or flows that explain the sales processes behind the data. Or maybe you just want it to look like your brand and be easy on the eyes. There’s a lot of opportunity to get creative here.
2. Splitting Opportunity Credit by Products, Not Just People
What’s new?
- Revenue on an opportunity can now by split by products on opportunity pages or reports
Why do we love it?
Splitting revenue credit by product mixes is a great way for businesses to increase sales and profits, as most companies already practice. Salespeople can become motivated to sell a broader variety of products and product teams can be properly credited for their marketing efforts. Giving organizations the ability to report on this out of the box in Salesforce simplifies this process and reduces the need for complex data manipulation. It’s no wonder this was such a highly requested feature in the IdeaExchange.
3. Chat with Einstein for Service Gets A Boost
What’s new?
- For sites with multiple Einstein bots, common chat functions can be created as reusable “Bot Blocks” to save building time.
- Pre-built templatized “Bot Blocks” come included for common chat use cases
- Einstein conversation mining can convert transcripts and emails into insights
- Einstein bots can now directly invoke standard object actions
Why do we love it?
Einstein bots have been getting major upgrades since their introduction and are a powerful tool to save agents’ time and get answers into the hands of customers quickly. The only blocker to getting a head start on bot implementation has been clunky set up, especially for companies with multiple brands and sites that may need many different bots with some common elements. These new reusable “Bot Blocks”, as they’re called, and the ability to invoke standard actions (instead of pre-creating tedious flows for the bot to use) should help people get up and running quicker with Einstein.
Einstein Conversation Mining is a very interesting edition to the Einstein for Service toolset. Chat transcripts and emails can be automatically mined for intent signals and provide digestible insights for Customer Success managers. Want to identify FAQs that aren’t already included in your automated support or help desk, or maybe analyze customer sentiment for recently released products or services? Now you can!
4. Field Access Can Now Be Set by Permissions Sets
What’s new?
- When creating or editing a new record field, you can assign field-level security by permission sets instead of profiles
Why do we love it?
As you might have heard, Salesforce is moving towards a permission set based security model. This is actually a best practice, as you can apply permission sets to all the users based on what job they do versus their specific role. In the present day, you’d have to create hundreds of profiles, or dozens of profiles in combination with disparate permission sets and permission set groups. Many orgs are already making the transition ahead of the change, and this gives orgs the opportunity to start migrating sooner without manually making changes set by set.
5. More Clicks, Less Code with HTTP Callouts in Flow Builder
What’s new?
- Pull in external data to use with flows using HTTP callout actions that calls a web-based service API
- Push data into external systems using POST with flows (Beta)
Why do we love it?
Previously, if you wanted to make a callout to an external system, you first needed to develop an APEX class with the appropriate methods and make it invokable. Now, if you are working with an external system that has a web-based service API, no APEX needed! You don’t even need to mess with JSON when changing data types in your data structure. The more declarative functionality, the better! If you have the opportunity to use the beta release of HTTP POST functions in flow as well, you can save yourself from even more coding.
Salesforce Summer 23 Release Honorable Mention
It was also announced that the Salesforce Summer 23 will feature a beta of reactive screen components and the ability to update the screen in real time with formulas. You can, for example, have a screen where salespeople can select from a list of products, and enter in the quantities, and based on formulas in the background, automatically display the total cost and stock availability of their selections before they move onto the next screen. The creative opportunities for this functionality are endless, and record pages are about to get a lot more interactive.
THE AUTHOR
Rick Craig is a Salesforce Architect who has worked in the Salesforce ecosystem for the last 11 years. Prior to joining Shift Paradigm as a Senior Consultant, Rick lead the development of the Marketing Ops tech stack for a global manufacturing company.
