I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to give up the summer for fall, let alone winter. Brrrrrr…
But, alas, here we are, getting ready for Winter ’22.
Once you’ve read the summaries, I highly encourage you to take these new features for a spin in your Winter ’22 sandbox prior to the Winter ’22 upgrade in your Production org. Or, you can get hands-on in a Winter ’22 pre-release org here. Check the Maintenance Calendar for exactly when your Salesforce org will get the Winter ’22 features. Scroll through the list and check your Salesforce instance (NA__, EMEA__) against the release dates listed in the calendar.
Note: There are a few features listed below designated as beta. This means the feature was rolled out publicly for testing. Beta features are normally given limited support, as they are not yet fully functional or finished features, so we recommend getting hands-on with these features in a sandbox.
As admins, we’re the ambassadors of Salesforce within our companies. So, it’s important for us to understand and highlight new features to our end users to help boost their productivity. Take the time prior to the release upgrade to prepare them for these new features.
I envision a meme of Oprah Winfrey saying, “You get an Einstein Search! And you get an Einstein Search!” Einstein Search is now turned on by default at no additional cost. Search is now smarter with personalized search results, record preview from the search box, and natural language searches. To learn more about what Einstein Search is and how to customize the search experience for your end users, check out the Leverage Einstein Search to Increase Productivity: Trailhead Live Recap blog post.
As an admin, you can fine-tune the search scope for users by defining which objects Einstein Search will always include in instant and top search results for any new or existing user profiles. The objects that you select are included with objects Einstein Search determines based on each individual user’s activity for the global search box. In Setup, access Search Results Objects (Beta), select the profile, and edit the define the scope of objects.
Let your sales reps choose how they want to send their list emails. Reps can send list emails through Gmail, Office 365, or Microsoft Exchange. Previously, reps could send list emails via Salesforce only. Contact your Salesforce Account Executive to be nominated into this pilot.
Note: “Pilot programs” are features that haven’t been made available yet, but are in the final stage of testing. Salesforce Product Management monitors the use of these new features during their “pilot” stage and gathers feedback to determine if the features will be rejected, modified, or progress into Production.
User’s choice! Now, your users can choose the display order of upcoming tasks and appointments, in a way that makes sense to them. Previously, the activity with the closest due date was shown at the bottom of the list. If your users want to view the oldest Upcoming & Overdue activities first, they just click on the gear icon in the Activities component and change the sort order. Voila! The oldest upcoming or overdue activity appears at the top of the list.
Use the new field CompletedDateTime to show the time and the date that an activity was completed. Add the Completed Date to your activity (task or event) page layout. Once your user completes an activity, the Completed Date is automatically populated.
You spoke (via Ideas) and we heard you. This was the top-voted customer idea of the Winter ’22 Release with more than 14,000 points! We now have dynamic gauge charts! Dashboard gauge charts are awesome for tracking your performance and business goals. However, your business is always changing, and having static goals or performance metrics just doesn’t cut it. Dynamic gauge charts, a beta feature, now gives you the flexibility to view your measure and target in real time. Before you can start using dynamic gauge charts, you need to enable the feature Enable Dashboard Dynamic Gauge Charts (Lightning Experience Only) (Beta) in Setup on the Reports and Dashboards Settings page.
Note: This feature is only available in Lightning Experience.
You can now Inline Edit in your reports’ date, lookup, and picklist fields in addition to text, number, and checkbox fields. This is in open beta this release and will still only support single edits. To use this feature, you need to enable Enable Inline Editing in Reports (Lightning Experience Only) (Beta) on the Reports and Dashboards Settings page in Setup.
Now, your subject line can contain up to 1,000 characters, up from 230 characters previously.
Use the Layout component to easily add a row to your Email Template Builder or Email Content Builder template. Select a layout with no columns or a preconfigured set of up to four columns. To add a row using the same layout, click on the copy icon within the layout. Or, drag a new layout format for your new row.
Note: To set up access to the new Lightning Email Template Builder, you simply enable the “Access drag-and-drop content builder” user permission in the profile or permission set.
Indented text creates visual variety and organizes text in your email templates.
Mobile Home is generally available as a standard navigation item for the Salesforce mobile app on iOS and Android. This is a landing page where your end users can personalize the content they care about most. As an admin, you add Mobile Home to any phone-activated Lightning app or to Salesforce Navigation in Setup. After it’s added, the Mobile Home tab will only appear on users’ mobile devices, not their desktop. Set it as the first tab and your mobile users have this brand spanking new landing page every time they open their app.
The new full-width tablet app experience is now available in the Salesforce mobile app on iPad and Android tablets as an administrator opt-in beta feature. This gives users the tablet’s full-screen experience using desktop record layouts with mobile optimized components. This new experience also supports Lightning apps, full-width Lightning record pages, Lightning navigation, and Einstein Analytics.
In Setup, find the New Salesforce Mobile App QuickStart. Scroll to the Tablet Preferences section. Select the tablet layout: Lightning on tablet: full-width (Beta feature. See below).
Admins, Winter ’22 is chock full of enhancements to boost YOUR productivity as well.
As a long time member of the Flowhana, I absolutely 
all the Flow-hancements that the Automation team ships. I have to admit, I always bee-line to the Flow features in the release notes. Flow Builder is the future no- to low-code automation tool. Read Learn MOAR in Winter ’22 with Flow Enhancements for my Flow highlights.
If you have complex business processes that require coordination between multiple users with multiple steps, Flow Orchestrator is here for the win! Flow Orchestrator, which is in beta, supercharges productivity with intelligent decisioning, notifications, and work queues. It also combines multi-step, multi-user workflows to facilitate tasks and approvals faster.
Consider Flow Orchestrator as the flow of flows. It brings the multi-user interaction and multiple-step processes together in one automated solution. This feature is definitely a tool to keep your eye on.
For more details on Flow Orchestrator, watch Einstein Automate: Flow & Bots Release Readiness on September 15. Also, check out the Automate Apps Fast for #AwesomeAdmins episode at Dreamforce.
In-App Guidance is a feature that’s generally available, which means it’s available for use in Production. Winter ’22 brings targeted prompts, allowing you to target a specific page element to your users. This is a nice enhancement because you can really pinpoint the section of the page you want to direct your users to. You can specify the page element to target by selecting the targeting mode and then the page element to target. Additionally, you can set customized positioning of the target prompt as well.
You can also specify if an In-App Guidance applies to all or a specific record type, allowing you to further customize your message to users so users can get detailed help for the unique layout and picklists of different record types. Previously, when you created In-App Guidance and assigned it to a record page with multiple record types, it appeared for all record types.
How about In-App Guidance to help admins and devs in Setup? This is now a thing in Winter ’22 on supported Setup pages! Create custom prompts and walkthroughs to highlight new features, and show your admins and developers how to configure apps and features. If an admin attempts to create an In-App Guidance on an unsupported page, a warning icon is shown to notify the admin that this action is not allowed.
Stay up to date on the valuable in-app prompts, welcome mats, and popovers that Salesforce shows admins and end users. Be aware of all Salesforce In-App content to avoid duplication of efforts on the communication front. However, if you prefer to turn off all in-app content created by Salesforce: Go to the In-App Guidance Setup page, click Settings, and then deselect Salesforce Standard In-App Guidance.
Boost the interactivity on your Lightning pages with components that communicate and transform based on user interactions, using Lightning App Builder. With Dynamic Interactions, an event occurring in one component on a Lightning page, such as the user clicking an item in a list view, can update other components on the page. Now, your developers can create cool Lightning Web Components for you to use when building pages for your users.
For more information, watch Brinkal’s presentation in the Release Readiness Live Admin Preview.
The Performance Analysis for App Builder automatically runs when you build a Lightning record page. If your page performance is poor or moderate, recommendations to improve performance will appear with a warning icon next to the Analyze button. It’s important for admins to watch out for performance issues and address them. No user wants a page that takes a long time to load!
Various factors can affect your Lightning page’s performance at runtime. Performance Analysis for App Builder gives you recommendations to improve your page performance using your org’s specific data. It analyzes the data from the last 90 days of use and displays it in your Org-Specific Metrics card results.
To access the Org-Specific Metrics, click Analyze from the Lightning App Builder toolbar. The Org-Specific Metrics section shows data from the org that you’re in. Note that if you run the user metrics in a sandbox, these metrics will be different when viewed in Production. If the Lightning page that you’re analyzing isn’t activated, the metrics shown reflect all users in the org. After the page is activated, the metrics are filtered to reflect only the users that the page is assigned to.
For those using territory management, you can now choose a subset of accounts to include when you run territory assignment rules. For example, you can run rules only for Boston accounts that were modified last month. With this feature, you can really run those territory assignment rules FAST! Otherwise, assignment rules run for all accounts, which can take a long time.
When you run assignment rules, you can now select Include a subset of accounts, and specify a last-modified date range, other filter criteria, or both. Currently, when specifying criteria, you can reference standard and custom account fields, except reference and picklist fields.
As admins, we need to be security-minded and protect our orgs. This includes always granting least privilege access for our users.
As a reminder, starting February 1 of next year, all users accessing Salesforce via the UI will be required to use either Salesforce’s MFA or your single sign-on provider’s MFA service. MFA is when a user must provide two or more pieces of evidence to verify their identity to gain access to an app or digital resource. First is something they know, like their username and password. Second is a verification method they have access to, like the Salesforce Authenticator app or a physical security key. To learn more, type “MFA” in the Quick Find Setup and select the Multi-Factor Authentication Assistant.
When viewing permission set licenses from the Company Information Setup page, you can now access the license detail page which shows you the overall license usage as well as which user, object, and custom permissions are available for the license. It also allows you to view and manage user assignments. Previously, the information on permission set licenses was not available.
From the permission set license detail page, you have the ability to manage users. From this new interface, you can manage multiple users for a specific permission set license at once, saving many clicks. Previously, you could only add users individually from the user’s detail page.
In Winter ’22, you can now view and update current assignment expirations for your permission sets and permission set groups. Previously, to update assignment expirations, you had to recreate them with the correct expiration date. This feature allows you to easily update expiration dates in a couple of clicks. Productivity gain!
To update the expiration date for a permission set group, navigate to the permission set group in Setup, select the pencil icon to edit the user’s assignment expiration, and set the new date.
Grant users only the access they need, when they need it. Combine the power of permission set groups with session-based access control. You can now create a session-based permission set group to grant access to permission sets during an activated user session in addition to individual session-based permission sets.
To create a session-based permission set group, select Session Activation Required on the Permission Set Group creation page. Next, activate the session for the permission set group using Flow or the SessionPermSetActivation SOAP API object.
Use restriction rules to control access to a subset of records to a specified groups of users. Restriction rules are available for custom objects, contracts, tasks, events, time sheets, and time sheet entries. New to Winter ’22, admins can now create and manage restriction rules in Setup as well as with Tooling and Metadata APIs.
To create a restriction rule, navigate to Object Manager in Setup. Select the object that you want to add a restriction rule for. Click Restriction Rules. Name and activate the rule in order for it to take effect upon saving. Then, select the users the restriction rule applies to. Specify the records the users are allowed to see in the record criteria section. For the Field value, you can reference another object’s field using dot notation.
To learn more about this feature, read Learn MOAR in Winter ’22 with Restriction Rules or watch Larry’s presentation in the Release Readiness Live Admin Preview.
Reduce noise for your end users when they’re searching for records. Define the criteria using scoping rules to help users see only records that are relevant to them, and prevent them from accessing records containing sensitive or inessential information. Note: Scoping rules don’t restrict the record access that your users already have as they can still open and report on all records that they have access to per your org’s sharing settings. Scoping rules are available for custom objects and these standard objects: Account, Case, Contact, Event, Lead, Opportunity, and Task. Please contact Salesforce to enable this feature. You can create and modify scoping rules using the Tooling or Metadata API.
To learn more about this feature, read Learn MOAR in Winter ’22 with Security Center Enhancements.
The Threat Detection integration powered by Event Monitoring for Security Center is now generally available. It uses machine learning to identify and provide data on four types of threats (Credential Stuffing, API Anomaly, Session Hijacking, and Report Anomaly) across your connected orgs in real time. Note: Security Center is available as an add-on subscription.
Using Security Center, automate security monitoring by setting up in-app and email alerts using conditions you choose. For example, set up a notification if the security health check is less than 60. Indicate what changes you want to be alerted of, how you want to be alerted, and who receives the alert. Note: This feature is available for customers who have both the Security Center and Event Monitoring add-on subscriptions.
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To learn more about this feature or the previous feature, read Learn MOAR in Winter ’22 with Security Center Enhancements or watch Pete’s presentation in the Release Readiness Live Admin Preview.
Enable an email domain allowlist to restrict which email domains are allowed in a user’s email within Setup. Previously, you contacted Salesforce Support to enable this feature.
In Setup, go to User Management Settings. Turn on Email Domain Allowlist. Then, manage the permitted email domains for users from the Allowed Email Domains Setup page.
As best practice with each release, review and stay on top of all outstanding and upcoming release updates. This is its own section in Setup. Give yourself ample 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.
To use the latest features and comply with browser requirements, all Salesforce orgs must have a My Domain. This is being enforced in Winter ’22. With My Domain, you can include your company name in your URLs, for example, https://yourcompanyname.my.salesforce.com. Deploy one or we assign one for you based on your org ID, which means we will name the domain using the Organization Name (see screenshot below) on the Company Information page in Setup. You also have the ability to use a different My Domain name as well.
Since My Domain affects all application URLs, we recommend that you test and deploy a My Domain before this update is enforced. If your org has any hard-coded URLs (which is a bad practice, BTW), you’ll need to update them or else they will break once you implement My Domain! A nice thing about MyDomain is it also removes the instance name from your Salesforce URL, which eliminates user login disruption if your org moves to another Salesforce instance. Read the Help article Set Up My Domain for more information.
To better protect your Salesforce data, this update adds organization-wide sharing settings for product records. Starting with Spring ’22, for new orgs only, the organization-wide sharing default for products will be set to Private for external users. Note: Sharing rules and manual sharing aren’t supported. This update was first made available in Winter ’22.
To better protect your Salesforce data, this update changes how unauthenticated guest access to product records is controlled. This update was first made available in Winter ’22. Determine if your guest users need access to product records. If so, we recommend that you create and test guest user sharing rules so your guest users do not lose the access they need. To ensure everything in your Salesforce org works together, you should review and regression test all customizations such as flows, validation rules, and Apex triggers to ensure that they are working with your new sharing rules.
From Setup, in the Quick Find box, enter “Product Settings”, and then select Product Settings. Select Enforce secure record access for guests accessing products.
Note: Once the Product organization-wide sharing default for external users is no longer applied to guest users and guest user access is set to Private, this setting can’t be changed.
In Winter ’22, admins can now configure a default custom No-Reply address instead of having email notifications for incoming emails on existing cases, Case Comment, Case Escalation, and Case Assignment come from noreply@salesforce.com. Note: This update will be enforced in Spring ’22.
Which Winter ’22 user or admin productivity enhancements are you most excited about? Share with us on Twitter @SalesforceAdmns using #AwesomeAdmin.
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