Though the first day of autumn is barely behind is, it’s already time to think about the Salesforce Winter ’25 release. Release seasons bring new features, community ideas delivered, enhancements, and more, and as we get ready for the latest and greatest, our goal is to ensure our customers know how to make the most of their investments in the Salesforce platform.
What is a Salesforce release? If you are an existing Salesforce user, you may periodically see changes, maintenance items, and enhancements to your Salesforce org deployed by your administrator or a like HigherEchelon.
But beyond customizations specific to how you and your company or agency use Salesforce, Salesforce also makes larger platform changes and improvements all customers can take advantage of depending on the editions and products you use. Releases mark opportunities for the HigherEchelon team to test out improvements, experiment with features, and make recommendations to our customers.
How can you prepare for a release? Depending on your role, release preparation can look different, but reaching out to the HigherEchelon team or your in-house administrator is a great first step! To prepare on your own, however, release notes are available to anyone to review. And if you’re an administrator of an existing Salesforce org, preparation is critical to avoid surprises.
Begin by understanding when you’ll get the release by finding your instance on the Salesforce Trust website. If you’re not sure what instance you are on, look for “company information” within the “Setup” menu. Then, check out Release Readiness Trailblazers Community, tune into Release Readiness Live announcements on Salesforce+ from October 9-11, and test out features in trial orgs or in sandboxes.
What can we look forward to with Winter ’25? Relevant release items depend on the products and features you use, but we found the following announcements most exciting.
For Everyone: Public Sector Solutions Talent Recruitment Management
At Dreamforce in September, the release of two new apps for Public Sector Solutions made waves, this one being an app the HigherEchelon team had a hand in helping architect. And if you are curious about this new app, or the other app available with Winter ’25 – Investigative Case Management, we are here to help! The Talent Recruitment Management app supports:
- Recruitment management through streamlined position, requisition, and job posting management
- A modern, seamless job application experience for job seekers, including a guided application flow and searches tailored to their interests
- A streamlined hiring and evaluation process for hiring managers and interviewers
- Compliant Data Sharing to ensure users can only see data they should see
For Admins: Do More with Custom Report Types (Beta)
Though all standard and custom objects in Salesforce have default report types, admins can create their own report types if the out-of-the-box report types are insufficient. With this release, a beta feature modernizing the custom report types section of the setup menu makes finding custom report types much easier. Admins must activate this feature to test it out, and as is the case with other beta features, we will keep our fingers crossed this one makes it out of testing!
For Admins: Delivered Idea: Get Insight into How a User’s Permissions Are Granted
The phrase “delivered idea” in a release item refers to features pulled directly from the Idea Exchange; it’s proof that submitting and voting for ideas that benefit the Salesforce ecosystem can be put in practice. From a user record, admins can click a new “View Summary” option to see how individual permissions are granted to an individual user. Simplified user management makes troubleshooting faster and easier.
For Admins: Delivered Idea: See How Object Access Is Granted in Object Manager
Another delivered idea, this enhancement lets admins get a comprehensive view of the permission sets, permission set groups, and profiles that grant access to an object, and the level of access granted. It makes checking object permissions when troubleshooting, completing reviews, or determining how to grant user access faster.
For End Users: Sort List Views by Multiple Columns (Beta)
This feature, though in beta, marks a great improvement in data visualization outside of reports. Admins must turn this feature on, but when it’s available, end users can sort a list view by a primary column, then select up to five additional columns to sort data.
For Admins: Delivered Idea: Configure Record Highlights in Lightning App Builder
Prior to this release, the only way admins could configure the highlights panel on a record page was using compact layouts. Now, a new Dynamic Highlights Panel provides the ability to configure the panel in the Lightning App Builder along with customizing actions for LWC-supported objects. Admins can add up to 12 fields and apply visibility rules as well, replacing the more restrictive compact layouts.
For Admins and End Users: Delivered Idea: Make Record Fields Stand Out with Conditional Formatting
Using a tool called rulesets, with Winter ’25, it’s possible to give fields on Dynamic Forms-enabled pages custom icons and colors that can appear, disappear, and change color based on criteria and rules that you define. Conditions can be based on the value of a field itself or on other fields on the page and can be defined in the Setup menu within Object Manager. Once implemented, this feature can help users quickly identify the most relevant information on a record page.
For Admins: Effortlessly Build Omnistudio Components by Using New Designers
If you’re unfamiliar with Omnistudio, it’s a powerful suite of task-based components and services that enable businesses to rapidly deliver digital-first and industry-specific experiences across multiple devices and channels. These tools include OmniScripts (to help craft code-free dynamic experiences), FlexCards (to help deliver contextual information at a glance), Data Mapper, and Integration Procedures (to simplify the incorporation of external data).
For those working with OmniStudio, a key component of Salesforce’s Public Sector Solutions product suite, these designers provide the standard components for building user interfaces and integrating these components with other applications within Salesforce. With Winter ’25, designers for Flexcards, Omniscripts, Integration Procedures, and Omnistudio Data Mappers include user-friendly navigation, enhanced accessibility, updated styling, fonts, and colors, making them more aesthetically pleasing and cohesive.
For Admins: Two Flow Enhancements
Flow is the present and future of declarative automation on the Salesforce platform, and every release brings improvements to it. There are multiple flow enhancements with Winter ’25, and rather than making this highlight article all about flow, we’ve chosen two of our favorite flow-related enhancements:
- Identify Inefficient Flow Designs with New Tips – whether you’re a flow building veteran, beginner, or somewhere in between, efficient design can make all the difference. With Winter ’25, Salesforce provides tips to help flow builders avoid common pitfalls.
- Expand Your Email Reach by Using CC and BCC Options in Send Email Action – in addition to an increase in the number of recipients you can send emails to in flow from 5 to 150 (!!), CC and BCC recipients can now be added using the “Send Email Action” in Flow Builder.
For Admins: Create and Verify Your Default No-Reply Organization-Wide Email Address to Send Email (Release Update)
Though not as exciting a dynamic highlights panel or flow enhancements, this is a release item to pay attention to. This concept was introduced in the previous release, Summer ’24, and is being enforced with Winter ’25. If you do not have a verified org wide email address, there is potential for some emails you send from Salesforce to fail to send.
These are some of our most notable features for Admins and Public Sector customers, but there’s SO MUCH to explore in this next release! Learn more about what new features are available with the Winter ‘25 release through the release notes, and contact us if you’d like to learn more about how HigherEchelon partners with organizations to help quickly and successfully implement Salesforce. (We’re good at improvements in existing orgs, too!)