Salesforce Summer Release ’23 Notes – Features & Updates

With every release, Salesforce introduces exciting new features and enhancements that help organizations improve their business processes and stay ahead of the competition. The Summer Release ’23 is no exception, as it brings a plethora of new products, updates, and features across various Salesforce clouds, including Sales, Service, Marketing, Analytics, Industries, and more. 

From improved analytics experiences to new solutions for industries like healthcare and nonprofit, this release offers something for everyone. In this document, we will explore some of the key features and updates that you can expect from the Salesforce Summer Release ’23. Let’s dive in!

General Enhancements

• Salesforce Summer ’23 release brings several exciting new features and enhancements to the Lightning Experience that will enhance user productivity, performance, and accessibility. One significant change is the continuation of the auto-enablement of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for direct logins, which is now contractually required for all Salesforce org users. Salesforce plans to enforce MFA permanently in the future, so users should enable it as soon as possible to avoid potential disruptions.
• Other enhancements include improved color contrast in UI elements to aid low vision users, tab-focused dialogs that allow users to interact with other UI elements, and the ability to view tenant IDs for Salesforce org, Tableau deployment, Mulesoft org, Commerce Cloud tenant, and Marketing Cloud MID in the Your Account app. Additionally, over 100 objects now use Lightning Web Components to render record home pages, improving performance, accessibility, and service availability.
• Further, related lists now load faster with better accessibility support, and there is a new Salesforce Feedback Management Developer Guide that consolidates all developer resources in one place. Finally, the News, automated account fields, and automated account logo features are being retired in Winter ’24 on October 13, 2023.

The Salesforce Summer’ 23 Release offers many new and improved features to boost productivity, efficiency, and accessibility for Salesforce users. Stay up-to-date with these changes and ensure a smooth transition by exploring our comprehensive guide to the Salesforce Summer ’23 release notes.

Einstein Search

Improve your search results by utilizing Search Manager to configure both standard and custom searchable objects, including picklists, to find information related to your work. With Einstein Search Answers, you can receive specific answers from knowledge articles to help you with your search. The use of ALBERT EINSTEIN’s rights is authorized by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and exclusively represented by Greenlight.

You can now help your team find results related to their work by configuring all searchable standard and custom objects for each user profile with the new beta feature of configuring searchable objects in Search Manager. In addition, you can quickly configure searchable picklists by selecting a picklist field in Search Manager, eliminating the need for additional workflows. By selecting from a list of options available for a specific field in a Salesforce object, such as a list of regions, users will receive the most relevant results.

Speed up your case resolution with Einstein Search Answers in the pilot feature. Extracted relevant text from knowledge articles will help you find the answers you need. You can interact with the answers, copy the link or answer to your clipboard, and easily view the source of the answer.

Analytics

New and updated Analytics features provide a more cohesive and efficient experience for users. The Analytics tab and Slack now offer unified experiences for Lightning reports and dashboards, CRM Analytics, analytics apps, Einstein Discovery, and Tableau. Sharing analytics with colleagues is easier than ever with the “Post to Slack” option on Lightning dashboards and the CRM Analytics for Slack app. 

Enhancements to Lightning reports and dashboards allow for unlimited edition users to add images, rich text, and up to five dashboard filters. Streamlined data analysis is made possible with updates to lenses, widgets, and dashboards in CRM Analytics. Industry-specific and prebuilt CRM Analytics apps are also updated. 

Decision Optimization (beta) can improve Einstein Discovery’s recommendations, and users can migrate their models with packages. Tableau offers enterprise analytics platform solutions for deep data exploration, and engaging visualizations can be embedded in Lightning pages. Finally, Marketing Cloud Intelligence helps optimize performance within campaigns and discover real-time insights.

Commerce

Commerce Cloud has added new and updated features to improve B2B and D2C Commerce, Omnichannel Inventory, Salesforce Order Management, and Salesforce Payments. The new extensions UI allows customization of Salesforce Commerce processing, and Salesforce Payments lets customers create payment links for faster and more convenient transactions. Guests can now shop in B2B stores, and stores can be segmented into markets based on locale. The new commerce assistants can help with setup and troubleshooting, and product data can be exported and searched globally.

The Omnichannel Inventory update includes the reservationId field for end-to-end tracking, while the Salesforce Order Management update allows for charging fees and ordering on behalf of customers. Salesforce Payments is now generally available, making transactions faster and more convenient. Users no longer need the Salesforce Payments managed package, except for limited cases. These enhancements improve user experience, making transactions more efficient for customers.

Customization

Einstein Prediction Builder now offers additional data from related objects to enhance AI predictions. The new Salesforce Connect adapter for GraphQL allows connection to external sources that expose their capabilities via GraphQL. Field-level security can be assigned for permission sets instead of profiles, making permission management easier. Lightning App Builder has a new Field Section component setting and Dynamic Forms on Mobile (beta) to improve user experience. Globalization updates include ICU locale formats and Custom Address Field functionality. External Services has a smoother pathway to register MuleSoft APIs, and better performance for cases and contacts.

Data Cloud

Data Cloud, previously known as Customer Data Platform, is a platform that allows businesses to ingest, harmonize, unify, analyze, and stream data. The platform offers updated features and documentation, including the ability to organize data with Data Spaces, which allows users to segregate data based on their business needs, and Rapid Segment Publish, which enables the activation of data every one or four hours. 

Nested Segments and Exclusion Criteria narrow the segment audience by using existing segment rules and common elements, while the SFTP Connector allows users to create data streams by migrating data from multiple sources into a central location. 

Data Cloud also offers Auto-Mapping Suggestions that suggest DMO fields that should be mapped to DLO fields, Tableau Connector to connect Data Cloud and Tableau, and SageMaker Models that enable data scientists to access harmonized, near-real-time Customer 360 data in AWS SageMaker. 

With Data Cloud, businesses can also activate their Data Cloud profiles to B2C Commerce, enrich their data actions with related objects and attributes, and power near-real-time orchestration with Marketing Cloud Journeys.

Development

Salesforce has announced various enhancements for developers using Lightning components, Visualforce, Apex, platform events, or APIs with their preferred programming language. The updates include Lightning Web Security, Light DOM, and multiple stylesheet customization for Aura components. The RefreshView API is now available, providing a standard way to refresh component data in LWC and Aura. 

Developers can increase the security of Visualforce pages and retrieve custom labels using the System.Label.get method. Apex improvements include significant enhancements to DataWeave, a maximum stack depth of Queueable jobs, and reduced redundancy in stack trace output. 

Developers can query up to five levels of parent-to-child relationships in SOQL queries, and the retirement of API versions 21.0 through 30.0 is delayed until Summer ’25. Salesforce Developer Experience (DX) makes development on the Customer 360 Platform easy, and Salesforce Functions extends the power of Salesforce with elastic compute and language flexibility. 

Lastly, developers can receive change events for more objects and track the publishing of platform events with enhanced event usage metrics.

Experience Cloud

Revamp your Aura and LWR (Lightning Web Runtime) sites with new enhancements and components to improve their performance, productivity, and security. With Expression-Based Visibility and device-based visibility settings, personalize your sites to meet your needs. 

Create dynamic components, like Tabs, List, and Site Logo components, and enjoy improvements to the Actions Bar and Record Detail components. Migrate your Aura sites to Google Analytics 4 and upgrade your Aura components using the Lightning Web Security architecture. 

Additionally, set up and manage your custom domain with ease and improve site performance with new mechanisms for component loading and caching. For enhanced security, block your organization from sending emails from an unverified guest user email address and take control of the self-registration process by disabling the standard components for self-registration on Aura and LWR sites. Get your Experience Cloud site ready for the move to Salesforce Edge Network with new updates and guidance.

Industries

Salesforce Industries solutions are tailored to meet the specific needs of various businesses, which means less time spent on customization. Automotive Cloud allows for scheduling test drives and service appointments, while Consumer Goods Cloud enables online price calculations and in-store visit planning. 

Financial Services Cloud now offers Actionable Segmentation. Health Cloud supports scheduling home healthcare visits, and Grantmaking for Public Sector Solutions and Nonprofit Cloud assist in managing grant lifecycles. 

Net Zero Cloud allows for data uploading via CSV files, and Loyalty Cloud automates tier selection for upgrades. Manufacturing Cloud orchestrates warranty lifecycles, and Rebate Management streamlines the creation of ship and debit programs. Additionally, there are numerous updates and changes to Education Cloud, Nonprofit Cloud, Media Cloud, Industries common features, and more.

Sales

Sales professionals can now work more efficiently with the latest products and features. With opportunity product splits, sales teams can allocate revenue more accurately for complex deals and view these splits in reports and forecasts. 

In Sales Engagement, cadence steps can be timed and usage data can be monitored. Einstein Conversation Insights now supports more languages and voice providers, making it easier to share call transcripts, insights, and action items with more users. Revenue Intelligence provides the Sales Rep Command Center to equip sales teams with essential information. Furthermore, custom columns offer sales professionals more insights into sales forecasts, thanks to charts and external data.

Service

Revamp your service strategy with the latest features and product upgrades to increase customer satisfaction. 

Einstein Conversation Mining, now available for general use, converts conversation data into service insights and enables building bot intents. With on-demand template creation in Reply Recommendations, update replies easily. 

The beta version of Bot Blocks allows the addition of prebuilt functionality to multiple bots. Advanced self-service automation is now possible with the Service Catalog, empowering customers and partners. 

Enhanced Messaging channels allow recording and sending of voice messages, and business hours can be added to Messaging for In-App and Web. Use Individual-Object linking with flows to link leads, contacts, employees, and person accounts to interactions in all channels. With Feedback Management, get survey responses from unauthenticated guest users via APIs, while Customer Service Incident Management enables broadcast Slack messages with custom templates.

Related Read: Top 8 Features of Salesforce Summer ’23 Release

Summing Up

The Salesforce Summer Release ’23 Notes offer a wide range of new and enhanced features across various industries and areas of the Salesforce platform. From Sales and Service Cloud to Marketing Cloud and Analytics, these updates aim to provide users with more efficient and effective ways to manage their businesses and customer interactions. 

The addition of new products and tools, such as Einstein Conversation Mining, Bot Blocks, and Loyalty Cloud, show that Salesforce is committed to advancing its AI capabilities and creating more integrated and customizable solutions. 

Overall, the Summer Release ’23 Notes demonstrate Salesforce’s dedication to improving its platform and empowering its users with innovative technology. Stay up-to-date with the latest updates and features of Salesforce by joining saasguru community on Slack for FREE!