Summer ’23 is just around the corner and there are many interesting features! Let’s take a look at some of the key ones.
Analytics
- Enhance Your Visualizations with Images, Rich Text, and Dashboard Widgets. Unlimited edition. Add images, .GIFs and text to Dashboards. Components renamed ‘Widgets’. Widget limit increased to 20 charts/tables, 2 images and 25 rich-text elements.
- Focus Your View with More Dashboard Filters. Unlimited edition. Add up to 5 filters.
Manage Your Reports and Dashboards on the Analytics Tab (Generally Available). Analytics tab generally available. Manage Reports and Dashboards in a single place. Create collections to help users find related content.
General Enhancements
- Improved Colour Contrasts in UI Elements. Colour contrast of buttons, object icons, links and messaging elements have been improved. This is to make these more accessible for people with low vision.
- Experience Improved Performance on More Record Home Pages. Increased coverage of Lightning Web Component (LWC) objects. Approx. 80% of all record home pages now render using LWC. Improving page load performance.
- Get Better Performance for Related Lists. ‘View All’ on Related Lists on LWC-enabled objects now render using LWC instead of Aura components. Improving load time and accessibility.
- See Object Names in Record Tabs. Record AND object name now appear in record tabs.
- Set Passwords and Expiration on File Public Links. Add an additional layer of security when publicly sharing files from Salesforce. Add a password and expiry date to the link.
General Setup
- Boost Productivity with Mass Quick Actions on Related Lists (Beta). Add Quick Actions to Related Lists to perform bulk create/update actions (up to 100 records).
- Clone Lightning Apps. Enhanced since Winter ’23. Allows cloning of Custom Lightning Apps and their setup (including Utility bar configurations).
Lightning App Builder
- Give Your Mobile Users the Dynamic Forms Experience (Beta). Beta release of Dynamic Forms for Mobile. Allows greater control over page layouts and when fields are visible (e.g. conditionally display/hide). Available on selected objects.
- Align Fields Horizontally in Field Sections. Prevent fields collapsing ‘upwards’ due to differences in field heights. Fields will still collapse upwards if a field is hidden via a visibility rule.
- Optimize Your App Pages with the Accordion and Tabs Components. Accordion and Tab components can now be added to the canvas on App pages.
Permissions
- Set Field-Level Security for a Field on Permission Sets Instead of Profiles (Generally Available). Enabled via ‘User Management Settings’. Set the default behaviour for modifying Field-Level Security at the Permission Set, rather than Profile Level. Still heavily using Profiles? Check out this article.
- Check out the Winter ’23 post for more information on how this feature works.
- Allow Delegated Admins to Manage Permission Set Group Assignments. Allow Delegated Admins to assign Permission Set Groups, alongside Profiles, Permission Sets & Public Groups.
Salesforce Flow
Flow continues to receive considerable attention from Salesforce. Here are some of the key updates in the Summer ’23 release.
- New Process Creation Is No Longer Available. The farewell to Process Builder continues. New Process Builders cannot be created, but existing ones can be activated, deactivated and edited. Learn more about the on-going retirement here.
- Bring External Data into Flow Builder Without Code (Generally Available). Create reusable callout actions to external systems declaratively with Flow Builder (GET method). Use this feature to pull data into Salesforce.
- Send Salesforce Data to an External Server Without Code via HTTP Callout (Beta). Alongside the ‘GET’ method above, a new ‘POST’ method is in Beta.
- Build Screens with Reactive Components (Beta). Supported standard and custom Lightning Web Components can now react to changes in other components. To use this, you need to opt into the Beta (in Process Automation Settings) and update the flow runtime to Version 57.0 or later.
- Update the Screen in Real-Time using Formulas (Beta). Perform real-time calculations, with results displayed on-screen. This feature requires a flow runtime of Version 57.0 or later and to ‘opt into Reactive Screens Beta’.
- Log Emails Sent with the Send Email Action. Log emails sent via the Send Email action into Activity timelines. Emails can be logged against recipient records (e.g. Lead, Contact, Person Account) and non-recipient records (e.g. Account and Opportunity). This provides a 360-degree view of messages sent.
- Use Email Templates in the Send Email Action. Use email templates (Classic and Lightning) with merge fields directly in the Send Email Action. Requires the email template Id, Recipient Id and Related Record Id.
- Search and Display Data Table Results in Screen Flows. Add a search to a Data Table; returning the first 1500 results. Initially, the first 200 results are displayed. Additional blocks of 100 are loaded on scrolling.
Other Updates
As always, there are so many updates to choose from. it makes picking a handful to cover quite challenging! Here are some other updates which caught my attention:
- Say Hello to Salutation Picklist Values in Lightning Experience. Salutation field values on Lead, Contact, Person Account and Individual Objects can now be updated from Setup in Lightning Experience.
- Query Five Levels of Parent-to-Child Relationships in SOQL Queries. A single SOQL can now query 5-levels down (i.e. from parent to child). This is available on standard and custom objects when using REST or SOAP APIs.
- Set Up and Maintain Backups More Easily. A new version (Version 2.0.0) of Salesforce’s Backup and Restoration app is now available. With an improved UI, autosave, guided setup (via in-app guidance) and troubleshooting, this appears to be a significant update.
- Provide More Detailed In-App Guidance with Targeted Prompts on Record Fields. Add in-app guidance prompts for fields on record pages/dynamic forms and on a create window.
- Resolve Cases Faster with Einstein Search Answers (Pilot). Empower agents using Einstein search to locate snippets of content from relevant Knowledge articles.
Feature Retirements
There are several updates on feature retirements:
| Feature | Retirement date |
|---|---|
| Async SOQL Is Being Retired | Summer '23 - Release date |
| Einstein Account Insights and Opportunity Insights Are Being Retired | Summer '23 - August 16 2023 |
| News, Automated Account Fields, and Account Logos Are Being Retired | Winter '24 - October 13 2023 |
| Salesforce for Outlook Is Retiring in June 2024 | June 2024 |
| Salesforce Platform API Versions 21.0 Through 30.0 Retirement (Release Update) | Summer '25 - Release date |
This is not exhaustive. Be sure to check out the release notes for any other retirements impacting your org.
Release Updates
Each release, Salesforce introduces a number of core ‘release updates’. These are typically platform updates, designed to improve performance, usability and security. In Summer ’23, there are currently:
- x7 enforced updates (cannot be disabled when enabled)
- x2 automatically enabled updates (enabled, but can be disabled until enforcement).
Click here for more information.
Summary
The Summer ’23 release is full of features to help businesses of all sizes. Hopefully this summary has highlighted some features which have been of interest to you. As always, it is a good idea to also check out the full release notes in case there are any features relevant to your org!
Until next time, thanks for reading! 🐧
Bonus Penguin Fact
Did you know there is a real Penguin with more than 17,000 Facebook followers? It’s true! Spike, a King Penguin who lives at Birdland in Bourton-on-the-Water in the UK, is a famous penguin. He has been featured in various TV programmes, adverts, calendars and books. This enterprising penguin has gone one step further and has recently been crowned the world’s ‘most popular flightless bird’!
Check out this blog from Birdland to find out more! Have a look at the various starring roles Spike has been in; you never know, you may have seen him already too!
Lastly, if you want to follow Spike the King Penguin’s adventures, you can do so here!
Want More?
Found this article useful? Why not share!
Or check out some of our other articles: