Three times a year Salesforce releases new products, features, and updates. Each release coincides with the following seasons: winter, spring and summer. These products and features may be in a beta (Pilot) test version or have passed this phase and shown “generally available” (GA). The Salesforce Release Notes provide a description of the new features and enhancements. These Notes can now be found as part of the Salesforce Help Documentation.
What’s new in the Salesforce Summer’21 Release?
There have been various improvements in this new release. We propose a summary of what we consider to be the most impactful changes based on our own experience at SkyPlanner. However, we recommend looking into the Salesforce Summer ’21 Release notes so you don’t miss out on anything.
Some critical updates
- Multi Failure Authentication (MFA) will be mandatory as of February 1, 2022. This may affect some API users. Salesforce recommends that you start planning your MFA implementation as soon as possible.
- Omni-Channel Flow (Beta) can be used to direct work more efficiently and to the most qualified agents. Omni-Channel incorporates all its functionalities within a Salesforce Flow.
- “Sharing” also incorporates some particularly good updates.
- As workflows continuously receive new and improved functionalities, they point to the eventual replacement of Process Builder.
Our selection
General improvements in Salesforce
Future Requirement to Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Starting February 1, 2022, all internal users who log into Salesforce will be required to use MFA at no additional cost.
Power Up Recently Viewed Lists with Customizable Actions
With performance improvements. You can now add custom actions to “Recently Viewed” lists.
Track Your Active Licenses
The new tab “Active Licenses” allows the supervision and monitoring of different types of licenses. In addition, the “License Metrics” option helps you identify disused licenses or new licenses that may be needed.
Enable Topics for Objects in Lightning Experience Setup
A new way to organize records by “topics”. Previously only available in Classic.
Search improvements
Einstein Search (GA)
Smarter search powered by AI. Einstein Search is now available for general use at no additional cost. Relevant search results based on user activity and natural language search. It makes it possible to perform tasks directly from the search box. Eg: creating contacts.
Analytics: reports and dashboards
Update Fields from the Report Run Page with Inline Editing (Beta)
With online editing, you can update report data and object records, without leaving the “Report Execution Page”.
Customization
Sharing
See Record Access Reasons in Lightning Experience (LEX)
Now visible directly from the “record sharing hierarchy” in LEX, not just Classic. Available in the action menu and in the Share window.
Control Access to Sensitive Data with Restriction Rules (Beta)
Restriction rules allow you to control which subset of records a specific group of users can view. Allows users to view only the records necessary for their work.
General Setup
Save Time with Mass Actions in Split View
You will be able to work on several records at the same time, now in a split view.
Lightning App Builder
Improve Page Performance with Custom Lightning Component Analysis
Performance evaluation of your registration page through Lightning App Builder toolbar analysis. Also in the results of the “desktop performance analysis card” the analysis is incorporated into the “custom Lightning components”.
Fields, Profiles & Permissions
Install More Custom Fields
The custom field limit has been increased to 900 for many objects. In addition, more fields can be installed from the AppExchange.
Protect Picklist Performance
On the “pick list” settings page there are 2 new options to control the limits of the inactive values of the “unrestricted pick lists”.
Prepopulate Dependent Picklists with Default Values
You can now prepopulate a record event with default values in the “dependent picklists”.
Sales
Pipeline Inspection
Provide sales teams with a single view of their processes with key metrics, opportunities, and weekly changes in closing dates, forecast amounts, stages, and categories.
Improvements associated with productivity
Email Experience: Learn More with Email Reporting
New custom “email messages” report to evaluate the effectiveness of the email dissemination strategy.
Measure Forecasts Your Way in Lightning Experience
Now you can base forecasts on custom fields of type “numeric data” and “currency”, increasing your flexibility to represent the business model with “Collaborative Forecasts”.
Integration with Microsoft®: Bring Salesforce and Microsoft Teams Together (GA)
Sales and service teams use Salesforce to manage customer relationships and discuss topics relevant to their sales pipeline and service cases in Microsoft® Teams. Integration with Teams provides context over Salesforce records from Teams channels and eliminates the need to switch from one app to another.
Services
Channels
Integrate the compatible telephone systems of your choice. Service Cloud Voice integration with Partner Telephony is now GA. Create custom solutions for customers with the Voice Toolkit API and Lightning web components.
Routing: Omni-Channel Flow (Beta)
Efficiently direct work to the most qualified agents with Omni-Channel Flow: Incorporate all the functionality of Omni-Channel within a Salesforce Flow.
Security and Identity
Get More Guidance from the Multi-Factor Authentication Assistant
Now MFA, during its evaluation period, includes a step that provides a preview of multi-factor authentication. You can enable MFA for some trusted users, test and collect information about their experience during deployment. Use this information to better prepare yourself.
Release Updates
Convert the Read Only to a Custom Profile
Allows you to edit permissions on this profile.
Development
Apex
Attach Actions to Asynchronous Apex Jobs Using Transaction Finalizers (GA)
The Transaction Finalizers function allows you to attach actions, using the “System.Finalizer” interface, to asynchronous Apex jobs that use the Queueable framework. A specific use case is to design recovery actions when a queued job fails.
Flow Builder
Use ISCHANGED, ISNEW, and PRIORVALUE in Record-Triggered Flow Formulas
The “record-triggered flows” for new and updated records now support the ISCHANGED, ISNEW, and PRIORVALUE formula functions. Copy your Process Builder or the workflow rule formulas that contain these functions into “record-triggered flows”.
Set a Default Value for Any Screen Component That Displays Choices
You can now set a default value using any flow resource: a registry query, an action, or another component. You can also manually select a specific value from a “pick list.”
Sort and Limit Data in a Collection
You can now use the “Sort collection” item to prioritize and limit your collected data. You can also limit the remaining elements in the collection variable after sorting. Previously, it was not possible to reorder the values. It was also difficult to separate the highest or lowest values of a collection variable and avoid hitting the flow limits when traversing a large collection.
Directly Update Fields in Record-Triggered Flows
With the new option “Update records” for “record-triggered flows”, you can directly update the record that triggered the flow. Previously, you set filter criteria for the trigger record with a “Decision element”, but now you can use the “Update Records” element.
Lightning Components
Create Quick Actions with Lightning Web Components (GA)
To save time and clicks for your users, create a quick action that invokes a Lightning web component. On a registration page, create a screen action that displays the component in a window, or create a headless action that runs with one click.
Create Styling Hooks for Lightning Web Components
To display Styling Hooks in your custom components, use CSS custom properties. They also make the code easier to read and update.
Deploy a New Custom Label and Component Together
Deploy a new custom tag and reference to that custom tag to an existing Lightning web component in a single deployment.
Certainly, there are many improvements and you do not want to miss anything that can facilitate your work. Some functionalities will disappear and others will be of inevitable application. If you need guidance, count on our team, write to us at hello@theskyplanner.com and we will gladly help you.
