So it’s that time. Summer release notes are out and all billion pages (615 actually) can be found here with an easy HTML browsing side panel.
I review things that I believe are going to make a small nonprofit or educational organization more efficient to run or that will require prompt attention. Lots of features come out that take too much admin or dev cost to be helpful to small but mighty organizations initially. And do remember that this is a preview. Features can and do change and even get cut or delayed before rollout. Here’s what I found.
The number one thing to look out for: no more new process builders. I’m still not a fan of going out and quickly migrating to flow for small nonprofits. I have converted some of my highest volume process builders using the migration tool. It mostly went smoothly. (I owe the community a blog about that soon). But if you don’t have urgent needs, I still recommend waiting a bit more. With this release, the migration tool supports scheduled action migration.
No more new Process Builders means you have to build flow starting with summer! If you’ve never done it, there are some excellent teachers out there. Look for new content, however. Lots has changed in the last year. Here are some resources I like learning from:
- “Rotive” YouTube videos by Brian Hays(very new user friendly)
- “Salesforce Break” YouTube videos by Andy Utkan (regularly reviews new features)
- If you’ve never programmed, I recorded a BAM (Be a Multiplier) teaching series that taught flow for admin beginners with no programming background. My videos are available by request in a managed learning environment for free.
And be sure to use a source to learn flow! It’s changed so much. Learn only modern best practices!
Another thing to watch out for will be outgoing email changes. This caused problems in my org in Spring 2023, and it’s changing more in Summer. To meet rising security expectations, we need to adopt these changes!
- You must verify any email address that is identified as a sender within Salesforce. If you don’t, the email will not be sent! This includes org-wide addresses, user addresses, and any associated with communities. We have more control with this release.
- We get the ability to add even more transparency with advanced features like DKIM and DMARC.
- Small nonprofits usually don’t have anyone with skills to follow all this so I’m hoping some consultants will help clear up everything. To complicate matters, sandbox orgs have a little bit different email setups so some of this is challenging to test out.
- See Email Experience in the HTML outline of the release notes for more information.
Here are the features I’m excited about:
- App pages now have accordions and tabs to better organize tasks and provide better user experience. I believe these may provide the best way to host helper flow apps that aren’t particularly “record pagey” for both desktop and mobile.
- In-App Guidance can now target specific fields. This may be a very focused and quick way for a solo admin to help users adapt to a small but important change in a page layout.
- Flow email action is not pretty much on par with email alerts. And Flow Data Table has been updated with more records, search, and an email core action that supports Lightning Email templates. These are typically the modern things to be doing in flow. Users deserve data tables so they really know what they are seeing and selecting. Separate the template from the flow and log actions so users can know that happened.
- Dashboard Widgets are new and allow for the addition of static images and text to help a dashboard communicate more clearly.
- Quick actions on standard related lists are now available (beta) on the desktop. This makes for exciting new possible ways to mass edit and add records while looking at a related list.
- The email composer for cases gets an open beta update, with potential future changes impacting daily user life. You’ll want to watch this one. I find it hard to believe changes to the activity email composer won’t be far behind.
- Custom calendars have a beta enhancement, making them more user-friendly. Calendars are a great way to visualize data if you can get over the user training hurdle.
- Dynamic fields for mobile are now available (beta), which is absolutely critical for small organizations with mobile users.
The reasons for my excitement and more details can be found in my [blog article]. I’ve included a few screenshots. I’ll be back with configuration and application notes as soon as the final summer rolls out for my org!