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Admin Release Countdown: Get Ready for Spring ’23

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Are you ready, #AwesomeAdmins? It’s almost time for the Spring ’23 Salesforce Release!

An essential part of every admin’s job is staying on top of the latest Salesforce Releases. Three times a year, Salesforce releases new features and updates to our technology, enabling users everywhere to take advantage of the latest and greatest that our platform has to offer! As an #AwesomeAdmin, getting the benefits from these releases is made even easier by knowing the basics and best practices.

Below are the most important dates you’ll want to mark in your calendar for Spring ’23. You can also review release dates and sandbox preview information on the corporate blog.

Image of Spring '23 milestone dates

December 15: Get early access by signing up for a pre-release org

Admins can sign up for a pre-release Developer Edition environment, which is full of all the Spring ’23 features to explore to your heart’s content. Developer environments are stand-alone environments where you can learn, build, and get comfortable with features and functionality. If you already had a pre-release org for Winter ’23, you can log back into that one.

December 21: Review the Release Notes

Search the products you use for release updates in the Release Notes section of Salesforce Help. The notes are now available using the link here. Be sure to check out the You Asked for It section, which lists all of the IdeaExchange ideas included in the release.

Get help from the community! With each release, there are a number of blogs by community members who break it down. Check out the Release Readiness Trailblazer Community Group where you can continue to get updates, share your favorite features, and ask questions about the upcoming release.

January 5 before 6 p.m. PT: Be sure to refresh your sandbox

Once you’ve explored the pre-release org and reviewed the Release Notes for features that are important to you, it’s time to try out features related to your customizations in your sandbox. This is a great time to evaluate how specific features may be useful or impact the way your organization uses Salesforce.

During each release, there is a group of sandboxes slated to remain on the non-preview instance (i.e. the current release) while there is another group of sandboxes that will upgrade to the preview instance.

Use the Salesforce Sandbox Preview Guide to determine the plan for your sandbox instance(s). Below are screenshots of the tool where you can search by sandbox instance and then specify what you want to do with your sandbox — stay on the non-preview or move to preview. It will then instruct you to refresh your sandbox to get to the desired instance or that there is no action needed because your sandbox is slated for the desired instance.

The Salesforce Sandbox Preview Guide with the ability to search a sandbox instance

Image of desired actions for the sandbox

If you want to learn more about this process and why you should be on a sandbox preview, take the Get Early Access with the Sandbox Preview Trailhead module.

If your sandbox is not slated to be updated to preview, take action before 5 p.m. Pacific Time on January 5 to get early access to all the Spring ’23 features in one of your sandboxes. Check out this Help Article for instructions on exactly how and when to refresh your sandbox.

January 6: Sandbox preview begins

Check your sandbox instance on Trust for your sandbox upgrade window. Just like the pre-release org, sandbox preview gives you the opportunity to test new features against your own customizations without affecting your live environment.

Now is a good time to check out Release Updates in Setup. This is where you go to review and activate release updates to improve org performance, security, business logic, and usability. See which items need your action, which updates are due soon or overdue, as well as updates that have been archived.

January 16: Learn MOAR about Spring ’23 features

Check out the #LearnMOAR page for new trailmixes for admins and developers that feature highlights of the Spring ’23 Release.

January 20: Release Readiness Admin Preview

Join Admin Evangelists and an expert panel for a one hour deep dive into the release including the features admins can’t miss. This preview is a great opportunity to hear an overview from admin experts, and may help you determine which features in the Release Readiness Live broadcast to focus on. There are a lot of features delivered with each release, so we go through all of it and provide a summary of the features most impactful to admins so that you can start innovating with new Spring ’23 innovations, fast.

January 20-27: Watch Release Readiness Live by cloud

Hear from product managers across the company and across the clouds as they share the latest features and demos of their products. This is a multi-day, live video streaming event that is available on-demand after the event.

January 13, February 3, February 7: Spring ’23 arrives!

Check the Maintenance Calendar for exactly when your Salesforce org will get the Spring ’23 features. Scroll through the list and check your Salesforce instance (NA__, EMEA__) against the release dates listed in the calendar. Once the release window has passed for your environment, you’ll have access to the newest features in your production environment!

More resources

  • Check out the Release Resources page for all the resources you need to help prepare your org and users.
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