Top Salesforce Spring ‘24 feature updates

This is the first public testing phase. The first round of public testing involves a small group of companies who opt-in and get nominated to join. To get into this group, you must opt into a pilot and be nominated for participation.

Once a feature passes through the pilot phase, it enters the beta phase. Beta features are out there for everyone to try, but they might not be fully ready or supported. It's like getting a sneak peek in a sandbox.

If a feature makes it through the above two phases, it earns its spot in a Salesforce release. GA (generally available) features are the real deal – fully functional and supported.

Salesforce is introducing the capability to transfer ownership of Lightning dashboards quickly. No more duplicating or re-creating dashboards when a user departs the company.

Now, you can efficiently transfer individual dashboards or do it in bulk. Additionally, automatic email notifications to the new owner simplify the process, ensuring a smooth handover.

You now get more incredible customization options for Lightning dashboards across all editions. Adding rich text and image widgets allows you to incorporate company logos, GIFs, descriptive text, and diverse charts.

Each dashboard can now support up to 25 widgets. This includes:

• Two images
• 20 charts and tables
• 25 rich text widgets.

This update is designed to enhance the visual representation of data without compromising functionality.

You can now efficiently reuse the same Lightning dashboard across different teams. Introducing up to five filters on a single dashboard eliminates the need for cloning, providing flexibility in data presentation. 

Notably, this enhancement applies to all editions, eliminating the prior limit of three filters for editions other than Unlimited and Performance. Simplify dashboard management and enhance data customization with this pragmatic update.

You don’t need to create custom formula fields or look for other record pages to reference data of related objects. With this new cross-object fields feature update, you can reference related object data on the same Lightning record page.

You can easily add cross-object fields in the App Builder. Just go to the "Edit" page and click on ">" next to the "Lookup relationship" field. Drag the desired cross-object field and place it at the desired location. You can see the field relationship in the breadcrumb tab on the right.

🔎 Author's note: These fields are viewable exclusively on dynamic forms-enabled pages.

In response to user needs, Salesforce is now introducing the capability to specify dynamic actions exclusively for mobile users. While previously available only on custom object record pages, this functionality can now be extended to standard object record pages in Lightning App Builder.

Similar to dynamic actions on desktops, you can now apply conditional filters to control the visibility of actions on mobile devices. To enable this feature, go to "Setup." Search for "Salesforce Mobile App" and enable dynamic actions on mobile.

For users with dynamic forms enabled on their Lightning record pages, viewing a field's properties now provides additional information. This includes the field's object relationship and application programming interface (API) names. Hence, it eliminates unnecessary clicks to navigate to the Object Manager.

It’s common knowledge that you can’t delete a permission set assigned to users directly or through a permission set group. Now, when attempting to do so, you'll receive a notification explaining why the deletion task cannot be performed.

This proactive notification system ensures clarity in managing permission sets and avoids inadvertent actions.

Take control of your user access policies with enhanced granularity. Still in the beta phase, user picklist fields, groups, and queues can be referenced in user criteria filters. 

This allows for more precision in automating user assignments to permission sets, permission set licenses, package licenses, groups, and queues. Enable "User Access Policies (Beta)" from the "User Management Settings" page in "Setup" to use this feature.

Now accessible to all editions, permission set groups provide a standardized approach to user management. By incorporating permission set groups and permission sets, you can stick to user management best practices and ensure streamlined permission assignment processes.

Text template resources now react dynamically to changes within the same screen. The text template resource (in plain text mode) ensures real-time updates by referencing component outputs on the spot. 

Whether it's a display text, long text area, or text component, this feature eliminates the need to switch screens to witness information changes, offering seamless text reuse.

Spring '24 marks the official release of the reactive display text component, supporting decimal places, commas, currency, and date formats precisely as they appear in screen fields. 

You can now see the long text area as a reactive component in the display text component. You can also use text formula resources for real-time updates, enhancing the display of currency and date values on the screen.

Users often need to create multiple datasets, but you must know how many you need in the screen element. But now, you can allow users to dynamically create multiple datasets within a screen Flow using the repeater component.

Whether it's adding dependents or work history to an application, this feature (still in beta) allows users to decide the number of datasets required during their interaction. While supporting various data types, note that the repeater component does not include conditional visibility, help text, or input validation for its internal components.

When you're building screen Flows and need to ensure users enter data correctly, you can now set up error messages. In the validate input part of your screen, create a formula that needs to be true for users to move forward. If not, the screen will show an error.

Before, you couldn't do this for custom or standard components like name, address, data table, dependent picklists, email, lookup, phone, file upload, and more!

🔎 Author's note: Unlike validation rules, the error pops up only if the input criteria are not met.

You can now retain record selections in data table searches. With Spring '24, users' selected records are preserved each time they search within a data table component on a screen.

No more frustration starting over with record selection – users can seamlessly continue their work without interruptions.

Building complex Flows becomes more flexible with the ability to save drafts for all elements (except screen and action elements). Now, you aren't obliged to complete element configuration in one go – instead, save your progress and return later to continue building.

The system warns what needs fixing before activating the Flow, ensuring a smooth development process.

The migrate to Flow tool lets you partially move actions from processes to Flow Builder. It's smart enough to highlight actions needing extra setup in Flow with a 'Needs Review' tag. You can shift almost all actions (except invocable ones) from processes to Flow.

This Spring '24 feature update is handy when dealing with pending scheduled actions that involve previously unsupported actions like 'Post to Chatter.'

You can gain insights into Flows using specific email alerts directly from the "Email Alerts" page. A new section, "Flows Using This Email Alert," provides information on Flow names, versions, descriptions, associated objects, and activation status. Clicking on the Flow name will open the corresponding Flow for easy access and management.

Salesforce is introducing the Transform element to aggregate data from a source collection, calculate the sum or count items, and assign the aggregated value to a target data field. This beta feature simplifies processes by eliminating the need for loop and assignment elements for such operations within a Flow.

You can now choose between running event-triggered Flows as the user who triggered the event or as the default workflow user. This option is beneficial in scenarios where Flow failures may occur due to DML operations fighting with callouts. You can change the default user under "Process Automation Settings" in "Setup."

After the Spring '24 Release, you can debug Data Cloud-triggered Flows before deploying them into production. When debugging a record-triggered Flow, you can pick an existing Data Cloud record and run tests to create or update it.

This includes tweaking fields on the record to simulate the update process. The debugging process walks through each step of your Flow, providing detailed debug info for each move.

👉 Author's note: Get more information about Flow-related updates here.

As an Admin, you now have a powerful tool to foster security in your organization. Go to the "Session Settings" in "Setup" and enable "Terminate all of a user's sessions when an Admin resets that user's password."

This allows Admins to terminate all user sessions automatically when a password reset is initiated. This applies not only to individual password resets but also when resetting passwords for multiple users simultaneously. It's an effective way to mitigate potential security risks and ensure a secure user environment.

Salesforce Authenticator is shifting towards a more secure verification method by replacing SMS-based verification with a six-digit code sent via email. Users can now verify their backup and restore connected accounts using their email addresses, enhancing the overall security of the authentication process.

✍🏻 Author's note: It's worth noting that users who still need to verify their email addresses can restore existing backups using their mobile numbers.

The Spring '24 Release has an essential update for the Salesforce Authenticator app. You can download version 4.1 from the App Store or Google Play around March 2024.

The new version introduces a feature allowing you to receive push notifications for identity verification, offering a more streamlined and user-friendly experience.

🔎 Author's note: Users with app versions below 4.1 can continue utilizing the app's time-based one-time password (TOTP) method for identity verification.

Ever wish for a formula translator that guides you through creating or modifying complex formulas? Well, I dreamt about it! With Einstein for formulas, that dream is about to come true. Einstein will now provide explanations for formulas in formula fields, validation rules, and default values. Say goodbye to formula guesswork!

Let's face it – the world is running on prompts. Catching up, Salesforce introduces Prompt Builder. It is a toolset to supercharge user productivity.

You start by creating a prompt template outlining instructions for Einstein on content generation. This template can include merge fields, and you can ground the data with Flow, tap into Data Cloud, and even use Apex.

In short, you instruct Einstein on what the prompt should do, where to pull the data from, and more. And the best part? You can test the output within Prompt Builder by selecting a test record.

You can now boost your automation by describing tasks or processes to Einstein in plain English. Einstein then creates a draft Flow for you so you don't have to create from scratch.

Post that you can review the initial skeleton, add finishing touches, perform tests, and deploy in production. Similarly, you can ask Einstein to prepare the initial skeleton of record-triggered, schedule-triggered, or screen Flow right through a prompt in plain English.

This beta feature is set to transform how Developers work by simplifying the creation and replication of scratch orgs. A snapshot is a real-time copy of a scratch org, meaning Developers can now effortlessly recreate scratch orgs with all their project dependencies intact.

This new development will enable Developers to save time, eliminate manual efforts, and accelerate their workflow.

✍🏻 Author's note: Available in both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic across various editions, this beta feature is also a game-changer for Hutte. With this new ability to capture and replicate scratch org configurations, Hutte aims to build further enhancements to its Scratch Org Management functionality.

As MFA adoption rates soar high in the sky, Salesforce aims to enhance user experience by replacing the enforcement of MFA with in-app notifications.

This shift applies to organizations where the ‘Require multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all direct UI logins in your Salesforce org' is disabled after Salesforce activates it in your production org.

🔎 Author's note: New production orgs created from April 8, 2024, onward will have MFA enabled by default.

There's good news for admirers of quality reporting and those familiar with the challenges of multi-select picklists. When creating a multi-select picklist, a modal will prompt you with the limitations associated with multi-select picklist data. This enhancement will bring clarity and streamline the creation process for multi-select picklists.