Summertime in the US is one of my favorite seasons because that’s when it’s warm enough to go to the beach, dig your feet into the cool sand, and have a lazy day with some magazines, music, and a lobster roll from the cooler for lunch. Plus, Mochi loves swimming in the cool water and it’s fun to watch her do the doggie paddle. It’s also release time at Salesforce.
After you read the summarized list of features below, go to your Summer ’24 sandbox and try them out yourself. You can also get hands-on in a Summer ’24 pre-release org. Check the Maintenance Calendar for exactly when your Salesforce org will get the Summer ’24 features. Scroll through the list and check your Salesforce instance (NA__, EMEA__) against the release dates listed in the calendar.
All enhancements below apply to Lightning Experience unless specified otherwise.
Releases include pilot, beta, and generally available (GA) features.
Check out a few Summer ’24 features I thought you Awesome Admins should definitely know about and as always, read the Summer ’24 Release Notes for features that impact your org.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is automatically turned on as part of the direct login process when a new production org goes live. This change does not impact sandboxes. Note: MFA is required for users who access Salesforce with single sign-on (SSO). If you use SSO for production, ensure that MFA is enabled for your SSO identity provider, or you can use Salesforce’s free MFA functionality. For more information, check out the Help article Use Salesforce MFA for SSO logins.
As an admin, if you need to make updates to a field, you’d like to understand where the field is used. Now, in Summer ’24, you can see when a custom field is used in Dynamic Forms-enabled pages using the ‘Where is this used?’ button on the custom field information page. Any associated Dynamic Forms-enabled page will be shown with the FlexipageFieldInstance reference type and will link to the specific record page.
You can now access and manage field history tracking in one place in Setup. Search for “Field History Tracking” in the Quick Find. You can search by object or only show objects with field tracking, view field history tracking by object, and make any needed changes from here. Previously, field history tracking was only accessed from each object: Object Manager | <Object> | Fields & Relationships | Set History Tracking.
Using Search Manager, you can configure the search index by adding/removing fields from objects, apply filters to search results with rules, configure objects to always search, and reduce repetitive setup of Search Manage configuration between Salesforce orgs by migrating Search Manager configurations with the new SearchCustomization metadata type. Use Search Manager to tailor your search configuration by user profile to help Einstein Search identify which objects to search, especially when there’s not enough data for Einstein to know which objects to search.
Use Search Manager to select up to 100 custom fields per object to protect. Note: All standard fields are protected by default. Einstein Search will match results based on information in unprotected additional fields for an object that has over 100 custom fields. Remove unprotected fields from the search index to prevent any unwanted search results.
Currently, when you add a new field, you use the wizard to add it to a page layout. However, there’s been no such ability for Lightning record pages—until now. In Summer ’24, if your object has an associated Dynamic Forms-enabled Lightning record page, there’s a new wizard page that allows admins to add the new field to one or more associated Lightning record pages. Note: The new field will be added as the last field to the first field section of the record page. If the object does not have any Dynamic Forms-enabled pages, this new step doesn’t appear in the wizard.
OMG! I’ve been waiting for this feature to come to Lightning App Builder. I’m all for showing the right data at the right time for the right users. We can now set visibility filters on our tabs so it only appears when it’s relevant to the user. If you can set component visibility on fields, components, dynamic actions, etc., in Lightning App Builder, then you already know how to use this feature. This feature had over 36,000 points on the IdeaExchange.
I’m excited about this feature, as it fills a parity gap with the blank space component in Classic. I like keeping my record pages visually nice and organized and will be using this feature a lot. Admins can now use the blank space component (located under the Fields tab) in Lightning App Builder for Dynamic Forms-enabled pages to add a blank space in between fields. Additionally, in the field section properties, check the ‘Align fields horizontally’ feature to horizontally align the fields. With the delivery of this feature, we closed 15,000 IdeaExchange points. Note: A blank space component is considered a field and, as a result, counts against 100 fields per region limit. It doesn’t, however, count against the component page limit.
Spice up your Lightning pages with header styling using the Rich Text component in Lightning App Builder. You can apply the styles Heading 1, Heading 2, etc., from the new dropdown menu in the Rich Text component.
For your Tablet users, for orgs with Dynamic Forms on Mobile enabled, you can now configure fields in two columns instead of one in the Record-Detail – Mobile and Field Section components. You can enable Dynamic Forms on Mobile from the Salesforce Mobile App page in Setup.
Prior to Summer ’24, in order to freeze a user or monitor login history, you needed to grant that user the Manage Users permission which gave the user access to more user permissions than needed, which was against the principle of least privilege (PoLP) access. Assign the new Freeze User permission to give users the ability to freeze and unfreeze user accounts. Grant the ‘Monitor Login History’ permission to users so they can view user login data.
Okay admins, your life as a user access detective just got a LOT easier. Instead of potentially spending hours clicking around Setup (trying to figure out what access Mochi has access to), what if you could see it all in one place? Accessed from the User record via the View Summary button, with this new User Access Summary page, you can view what your user has access to all in one centralized location! In one click, you can view User Permissions, Custom Permissions, the user’s access to Objects and Fields, as well as what Groups and Queues they are associated with. I see you doing that happy dance!
How many clicks does it take to see what permissions a permission set or permission set group has? What if you can view this information all in one click?! When you access the Permission Set Summary page via the View Summary button on a permission set, you can view the user, object, field, and custom permissions along with its related permission set groups. Similarly, from the Permission Set Group Summary page access via the View Summary button on a permission set group, you can view the user, object, field and custom permissions along with the included permission sets.
Keeping the PoLP in mind, before you add a user to a public group, you should see where this public group is used first. But finding the answer to the question “Where is it used?” could lead you on a hunt that takes a while to complete or requires you to use SOQL. Starting in Summer ’24, your life just got a little easier. When you access the Public Group Summary page via the View Summary button on the Public Group page, you can now see the owner- and criteria-based sharing rules, report and dashboard folders, and list views where this public group is used to grant access in addition to the other public group it’s added to. Note: The public group can be referenced in other features not listed in this summary.
Increase your productivity by eliminating some manual user management tasks by automating your user permissions. You can use User Access Policies, now GA in Summer ’24, to automatically assign or revoke access to permission sets, permission set groups, permission set licenses, managed package licenses, public groups, and queues to your users as criteria for the user is met or for mass migrating access. A new enhancement in this release is the ability to view access changes and control the order you want the policies to trigger using a new Order field on a User Access Policy! Note: You will have 200 active User Access Policies in your org beginning with this release.
This GIF shows a user access policy for users assigned to the Sales Associate profile, filtered where the user belongs to the Sales Department and the user record is active. It will grant the Special Mochi Cupcakes permission and assign the user access to the Bypass Group public group. We then test the user access policy on Jared Dunn who is in the Sales Department and is an active user who has just been assigned the Sales Associate profile.
MuleSoft Composer for Salesforce is now called Flow Integration. For Composer release notes and help, see MuleSoft Composer for Salesforce.
You, and now your users too, can view and monitor your flows in the Automation Lightning app. From the home page, you can view your most recently updated flows and flows that include errors. The search bar allows you to search for a flow in its name or description. There are also tiles that link to the Salesforce Flow Automation Trailblazer Community Group and to the Automate Your Business Processes with Salesforce Flow trail, respectively.
From the Flow tab, you can access a list view with all of your flows or create custom list views. You (and your users who have Flow permissions) can create new flows or open any flow in Flow Builder that you have permission to. You can create new flows from this page. For each flow, you can open up that version or the latest version in Flow Builder, change the owner, update the flow access, or delete it.
Note: To access the Automation Lightning app, you first need to enable the Automation Lightning app in Setup on the Process Automation Settings page, then check the box to Enable the Automation Lightning App.
Admins rejoice! We’ve addressed a long-standing request from the Salesforce community! In Summer ’24, for screen flows running with API version 61.0 or later, all subflows used in that screen flow will run the Active version of the flow instead of the Latest version.
When you create a single record using the Create Records element, you can now specify matching criteria that is met, which will update an existing record (performing what is known as an upsert function) instead of creating a new record. You can also specify what happens if multiple records are found that match the criteria. Another enhancement to the Create Records element is it now lists the required fields for the record to help minimize those nasty flow errors you get when attempting to create the record but you’re missing the required fields.
In this GIF, we can see that if the first and last name is provided for the contact screen flow that matches an existing contact record, it will update the existing record rather than create a net new contact record.
When you debug this flow, that has the Create Records element with the Check for Matching Recording attribute enabled, it doesn’t specify whether it created a net new record or updated an existing one. It does show you a clue in the debug by listing the record ID. You would then need to research whether it did in fact create a new record or updated an existing one.
A best practice to follow in flow building is to check for collections that don’t have any records (that is, Null or Empty collections). Use the Is Blank operator to check for both Empty String and Null values. Use the Is Empty operator to check both Null and Empty collections. With these new operators, you can eliminate the workaround of performing a collection count with the Assignment element and then referencing that number count variable in other elements in your flow. You can use the Is Empty and Is Blank operators in the Decision, Wait, and Collection Filter elements. We recommend that you use these operators in place of the Is Null operator going forward.
In the GIF, I set the field to Is Blank False (that is, there is a value) and a collection Is Empty False (that is, there are records in the collection).
You can now prevent users from updating a record that is currently being updated by your flow by using the Lock Record action. You can also specify who can edit the record while it’s locked. Use the Lock Record action to unlock the record too.
Debugging scheduled flows just got better with Summer ’24 enhancements. You can now select the specific record you would like to test your scheduled flow with instead of only being allowed the first available record. You can test multiple scenarios by selecting different triggering records to see if the record will run. Additionally, you can know the start condition requirements for the scheduled flow.
Here is the debug capability prior to Summer ’24. As you can see, not many options there.
This GIF shows the debug options now available for scheduled flows in Summer ’24.
The Flow Toolbox will now show labels in place of API names for your Flow elements. Need the API name? No worries! You can access additional helpful information about the element, including the API name, in the tooltip hover. You can now search for an element using either the label or API name.
The Transform element in flows is now GA. Map collections of data between flow resources in Flow Builder. The Transform element also has some enhancements since the Spring ’24 release. Mapping tips are a new enhancement which helps you avoid errors before you save your flow. Previously, you received errors for the Transform element only when you saved the flow.
You can now quickly find the flow or orchestration you want to build by selecting whether to start from scratch, use a template or have Einstein build it for you (more to come on that later). The following screen will further filter down the options. To be honest, I’m a bit conflicted about this one. As an advanced flow builder, this change adds one more click before I select the flow type I want to build from scratch, but I understand how the options can get overwhelming to those new to flow.
Screen flow builders—consider a user who selects an account and then on the same screen, Flow retrieves the associated open cases and presents them in a data table for further interaction. Wouldn’t that be cool if you could do that? Starting with Summer ’24, you can! Add the Action Button component to your screen. This button runs an autolaunched flow to grab and do cool things with the data, and then makes it available for other components on the same screen to use it. Configuring an Action Button is very similar to a subflow where you set up the inputs and can see the available outputs. Imagine the possibilities of this feature in building dynamic, reactive single screen flows!
In the GIF, you’ll see the ‘Get Cupcake Info’ button, created using the Action Button. It brings back information on the contact and cupcake orders based on the selected customer (that is, contact). We then look at the screen element in the screen flow, specifically where we configured the Action Button component. We see that an autolaunched flow ‘Retrieve Cupcake Orders’ powers the Action Button, and we pass the selected contact as an input to the autolaunched flow.
The autolaunched flow retrieves the customer information using a Get Records where the ID is the record passed as the input; retrieves the cupcake orders associated to the contact; sorts the cupcake orders to the most recent five orders; assigns the contact information from the Get Records to an output variable; and, lastly, assigns the sorted cupcake orders to an output collection variable. The record variable and collection variable are available for use in the screen flow with the Action Button component.
The key to Action Buttons is to ensure you have variable(s) set to ‘Available for input’ to pass into the autolaunched flow to perform its automation, and for any data you want to use in the screen flow, you need to ensure they are available for output.
To use the values from the autolaunched flow referenced in the Action Button component, locate the Action Button name> Results> <variable name>. If you have a record variable, you can further select the field for that variable.
The GIF shows the configuration for the Data Table component to use the sorted cupcake orders collection variable, and the street field is set to default to the record variable varContacRecord’s MailingStreet field (that is, {!Retrieve_Cupcake_Orders.Results.varContactRecord.MailingStreet}).
Gone are the days when you had to guesstimate how many multiple sets of data a user would need to complete on the same form or have to resort to custom code to handle this, like beneficiary information on an insurance policy application or work history for a job application. With the Repeater component, you don’t have to guess anymore. Let your users decide! They can add as many of these data sets as they need as they use your screen flow with the Repeater component.
In Summer ’24, the component has been enhanced to support most standard, GA screen components as child components. A really cool enhancement is that you can now set conditional visibility, validate input, and add help text to a field in a Repeater component. And, when you debug a flow that has a Repeater component, Debug now displays information about the component. Marvelous!
Here are some things about Repeaters that you should be aware of.
In this GIF, you will see two screen flows. The first one was the original cupcake order screen flow (Create a Cupcake Order) before the Repeater component was available, where we used a workaround to dynamically create up to five cupcake order items. (Side note: This was the screen flow I created and used in my panel interview for the Admin Evangelist role almost 3 years ago.) The second screen flow (Create a Cupcake Order – IMPROVED) replaces the workaround with the Repeater component. You can continue to add as many cupcake order items, and remove them, as you want.
It then created the cupcake order with the associated cupcake items (that is, records from the Repeater component). It showed the second screen flow using the Repeater component in the Screen element; how we used a loop that references all items from the Repeater component; assigned values for the flavor and quantity fields from the loop item to the CupcakeItemVariable; and added the CupcakeItemVariable to the CupcakeItemCollectionToBeCreated collection variable. Finally, we used a Create Records element to create the cupcake order items outside the Loop element.
In Summer ’24, we introduce the ability to conditionally set fields in your screen flows to read only or disabled. Super cool! Set your fields to conditionally disabled which will display input access if you only want to allow field updates when certain criteria is met. Set your fields to conditionally read only if you only want to display data without any interaction, such as on a confirmation page. These two features do away with the workaround of using the Display Text component with variable references to perform the conditionally read only function.
The read only and disabled states are available on the following standard Flow components: Text, Long Text Area, Date, Date Time, Number, Currency, Password, and Address. Additionally, the Choice Lookup, Radio, Checkbox Group, Picklist, and Multi-select Picklist components can now be statically or conditionally disabled.
The GIF shows the various fields shown in disabled and read only state. In the Choice section, when a cupcake flavor that is not Sprinkles is chosen, the Sprinkles and No sprinkles radio buttons were available. They were disabled when Sprinkles was selected as the cupcake flavor. Lastly, in the Pickup/Delivery section, if the state is MA, the Order Method picklist allowed for the selection of either Pickup or Delivery but is disabled and set to Pickup as the Order Method default for any state that is not MA.
This GIF shows you how we set the read only, disabled, and default values dynamically using formula resources. You can set them statically using the global variable True or False in the Read Only or Disabled fields.
When you reference the selected row of a Data Table in Display Text component on the same screen, the Display Text component correctly formats the field for you, whether it’s a currency, decimal, or date field. You can get rid of the previous workaround where you used a formula to handle the formatting for you.
Check out the latest updates to the Address component in screen flows.
Ever need to pause an orchestration while data is being collected and resume it once it’s there? Now, you can! You are now able to suspend a running orchestration and then resume it. Note: Any in-progress steps will continue to run when an orchestration run is suspended, but no new steps start. This feature applies to users with the Manage Orchestration Runs or Manage Orchestration Runs and Work Items user permission. To suspend an orchestration run, navigate to the Orchestration Runs list view, find the desired orchestration, and choose Suspend Run from its Quick Action menu. To restart a paused orchestration run, go to the Orchestration Runs list view, locate the paused run, and select Resume Runfrom its Quick Action menu.
Let’s say you have an orchestration that has failed. You troubleshoot and fix the problem. No need to start the orchestration from the beginning—you can continue it where it left off, before the failure. When you resume the orchestration, any stage previously marked with an Error status is resumed. For each interactive step within the resumed stage that was either Discontinued or encountered an Error, a new work item is generated. Background and MuleSoft steps within the resumed stage that previously encountered errors are restarted. Steps within the resumed stage that were Discontinued and have no pending outputs are set to In Progress. The pending data for all Discontinued background and MuleSoft steps within the resumed stage is processed. If any discontinued step’s pending data within the current stage is in an error state, the associated background or MuleSoft step is restarted. Otherwise, steps with pending data remain paused and are not restarted.
Use the Is Blank operator within orchestrations to check if a text value is empty or consists only of white space as a condition. For non-text data types, Is Blank functions similarly to the Is Null operator, verifying if the value is null. Previously, you used the Equals ‘Blank Value (Empty String)’ global constant operator to handle these situations.
For a more comprehensive list of all the upcoming automation enhancements, read Automation Product Manager Adam White’s blog Flow Enhancements | Summer ’24 Be Release Ready.
Are you creating or updating a formula and the syntax just isn’t quite right—but you’re not sure how to fix it? No more spending time searching the internet for answers. Einstein for Formulas to the admin rescue! With a click of a button, ask Einstein to fix the formula for you. Einstein will provide a recommendation on how to fix the formula, which you can then use to update the formula in formula editor. Note: This feature currently supports formula fields, formulas for default field values, and formulas for record validation rules.
This change applies to Lightning Experience in Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions. Einstein generative AI is available in Lightning Experience.
Describe to Einstein a task or process you want to automate, and have Einstein create that starter flow for you so you don’t have to create flows from scratch. What a productivity booster! Once created, review the flow, add your finishing touches to complete the configuration, and test it before deploying in production. You can create a draft record-triggered, screen, or schedule-triggered flow right from the new flow screen by describing what you want to automate in natural language, and Einstein will perform the magic for you.
In this example, I described my flow as follows in the prompt: “Collect the case subject, case description and case priority using a picklist of the case priorities and case status. Set the case status default to new. Set the case priority to medium. Create a case using the information.” Einstein generated this for me.
Remember, Einstein is helping you create a starter or draft flow. You still need to review it for accuracy and completeness, and make any necessary tweaks. Einstein was pretty close in creating what I asked. It created the screen element and used the Case’s priority and status fields for my picklist values, and created the case record. It did miss setting the default value for the status and priority fields. There is a feedback mechanism to give it a thumbs up if there were no issues and a thumbs down to provide feedback so the model can learn from it. Here, I did give it a thumbs down and let it know it missed a step. In reviewing the flow, I added a requirement I missed. Once it looks good, save the flow and don’t forget to debug it before you activate and deploy it into production.
Einstein for Flow is available in Lightning Experience in Einstein 1 Edition, Enterprise Edition, and UnlimitedEdition with the Sales Einstein 1 or Service Einstein 1 add-on, and Starter and Plus Editions with the Platform Einstein 1 add-on. Einstein generative AI is available in Lightning Experience.
Your users can complete work even faster with recommended actions in their flow of work. Einstein Copilot will automatically suggest standard actions that are specific to the page they are on before they engage Einstein! With a simple click of the action, they are on their way to productivity.
As part of your routine for preparing for upcoming Salesforce Releases, review the release updates to ensure you’re on top of upcoming updates. That way, you’ll have ample time to test and activate them before they’re enforced in your org.
To learn more, go to Release Updates in Setup. Give yourself plenty of time before an update is enforced to enable it in a sandbox, do proper testing, and make any necessary changes to code and configuration to ensure all still works post update.
I’m calling out a few of the release updates here. I recommend reviewing the comprehensive list of release updates for those that apply to your org.
Scheduled to be enforced in Winter ’25. Only users who have the View Roles and View Role Hierarchy permission can view and select the roles when they are editing the public list view visibility. Note: This release update has no impact if your org does not use roles.
Also scheduled to be enforced in Winter ’25. Once the Prevent Guest User from Editing or Deleting Approval Requests is enabled, guest users can approve or reject an approval request but they cannot edit, reassign, or delete them.
Scheduled to be enforced in Spring ’25. This update disables Ref ID threading and shifts to Lightning threading within Email-to-Case. Under the new threading system, incoming emails are no longer matched using Ref IDs but rather via a secure token embedded in the email subject or body. Should no match be detected, Email-to-Case then examines metadata from the email header for matching criteria.
Each release brings tons of amazing, new functionality and it can be a lot to digest. Over the next 2 months, we’ll publish blogs and videos that will help you prepare to get the most out of this release! Bookmark Be Release Ready and check back regularly as we continue to add new Summer ’24 resources for Salesforce Admins.
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