Are you ready, #AwesomeAdmins? It’s almost time for the Winter ’24 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 Winter ’24. You can also review release dates and sandbox preview information on the corporate blog.
Search the products you use for release updates in the Release Notes section of Salesforce Help. The notes will go live August 16 and we will share the link here.
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.
Admins can sign up for a pre-release Developer Edition environment which is full of all the Winter ’24 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. Pre-release org signups will be available for a limited time between Monday, 8/7 at 6:00am and Thursday, 8/10 at 5:00pm PT. New pre-release org signups will be disabled for maintenance between Friday, 8/11 and Monday, 8/21. Visit the Release Readiness Trailblazers Group for more details. If you already had a pre-release org for Summer ’23, you can log back into that one.
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.
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 August 24 to get early access to all the Winter ’24 features in one of your sandboxes. Check out this Help Article for instructions on exactly how and when to refresh your sandbox.
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.
Check out the Salesforce Admin and Developer blogs for announcements about new features and trailmixes that feature highlights from the Winter ’24 release.
RRL is IRL – In real life at Dreamforce, that is! For the second year in a row, join product experts and evangelists LIVE at #DF23 for a one-hour deep dive into the highlights from the Winter ’24 release. They’ll demo some of your favorite features, including what’s new with Flow, permissions and user access, and more. Learn about these new features and then ask your questions in a live Q&A.
Mark your calendars: Thursday, September 14 | 12:30 p.m. PT in person and on Salesforce+
Featured speakers: Ella Marks, Diana Jaffe, Cheryl Feldman, Larry Tung, Julie Thompson
Add Admin Release Readiness Live to your agenda
Add to your Salesforce+ schedule
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 two-day, live video streaming event will be available live and on-demand on Salesforce+.
Check the Maintenance Calendar for exactly when your Salesforce org will get the Winter ’24 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!
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