All About...Salesforce: October 2020

Get your heavy coat ready becaus…winter is coming. Well, actually the Winter ‘21 Salesforce release is here and it has brought with it some fantastic new features. And, as with any major releases there will be some headaches and we’ve worked through a few already, hand in hand, with our amazing clients.

Have some specific questions or want to learn more about how you can leverage new functionality for your organization? Reply to this email, I’d love to be of help.

– Jordan Berger, Senior Salesforce Consultant

CRITICAL ISSUE: Apex classes for Aura Components / Lightning Web Components

Any user who needs access to custom developed Aura Components or Lightning Web Components that call Apex classes now need to have access to that class or classes set at the profile or permission set level. If you have heard reports from your users, internal or external, who have had page components that previously worked and now no longer render or crash completely, reach out to us immediately and we can help remedy this issue.

RELEASE HIGHLIGHTS: Dynamic Forms, Case Ref ID, Flows, and a Rebranding of Community Cloud

Last month, I told you that Dynamic Forms is now generally available (GA) for custom objects. Now is the time for system admins to get comfortable with this new functionality as it looks like this will be the future of modifying field visibility at the page layout level. This is a huge step forward by Salesforce from a usability perspective as it allows far greater control over who sees what and where. This is a boon for system administrators and end users alike!

The Case Ref ID has gone the way of the dinosaurs and the poor dodo. Remember that gibberish-like string that was appended to case autoresponders to allow email threading on the correct case? No more! Salesforce has introduced new Email-to-Case threading behavior that matches incoming emails with their header information instead of through a Ref ID in the subject or body. This behavior will mitigate the deadly Email-to-Case loop.

Flows flows flows… Salesforce is obviously investing heavily in this automation tool and the results are starting to show. The benefits are myriad, but the highlights for me are the ability to use conditional logic in decisions, ability to access related record data without the need to use Get Records, and the new snappy auto-layout editor that lets you build flows quickly and cleanly. Salesforce Ben (a superb resource if you don’t already know of this website) lays out ten flow features to shout about in Winter ’21.

Community Cloud has been rebranded as Experience Cloud and there are some great new features available in this release. The most important from a user experience perspective is the ability to apply audiences at the record level. This means that we can dynamically show content at the record level based off of attributes on the record itself. That’s a big win from a flexibility and dynamic display perspective! 

WRAP UP: 5 Final Thoughts (for now!)

My work with clients over the past two months has reminded me that, with any Salesforce release, there are dependencies that come out during testing and developing. As we go into future Salesforce release cycles, it is critical for Salesforce product owners to look at their Sandbox structure and determine when changes will be made based on Salesforce’s release schedule. This can have serious deployment considerations that must be tested and validated to ensure new and existing development plays well with the new releases.

As always, reach out to us with specific questions about Winter ’21 – we are here to help!