Salesforce Winter ’23 Release: Updates, New Features, and Need-to-Knows

The Winter ’23 release is rolling out now. Salesforce packed a ton of new enhancements, timesavers, and glimpses into what the future has in store for subscribers. Many updates pertain to certain products or licenses within the Salesforce ecosystem. However, there is plenty included in the new release that benefits all Salesforce users. We picked out some of our favorites that we plan to use and think you will too.

#1 Make Way for Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

The rollout of multi-factor authentication continues as a significant improvement to Salesforce security. Starting in Q1 and Q2 of 2023, Salesforce is enabling MFA automatically for direct logins. By the fall, MFA will be a permanent part of the login process. 

If you haven’t made the switch yet, reach out to Galvin for support. Waiting could create access issues, so start working toward MFA with your organization now.

#2 Get Ready for Better Reporting

The Winter ’23 release introduces several new enhancements to reporting. Improvements include better looks, easier creation and corrections, and integrations with apps to make accessing report data easier than ever. If you build or use reports, these updates will make your work life better.

• Review a Custom Report Type Structure During Report Creation
  Questions about how a report is built, how it works, or what it includes are common. Finding the answers can be difficult. As a fix, Salesforce added a Venn diagram that allows administrators to see what objects are in the custom report and how they are joined

• Filter Custom Report Types for Salesforce Field
  Previously, users could only filter by objects when creating a report. Now you can drill down by field and any report containing the field will show up. This is useful when building reports to make sure the right objects and fields are included. The update fixes the issue of discovering a field is missing when building a report and having to rebuild in order to add it. This is currently in beta.

• Access Optimal Views on Mobile with Enhanced Reports
  Now reports look even better on mobile. The new release includes an improved interface, faster load times, and more consistent performance. The improved design offers better visuals and organization.

• Collaborate Around Data with Lightning Reports and Dashboards in Slack
  With Salesforce now the owner of Slack, there are many enhancements in this release that have the two platforms working together better. With the CRM Analytics for Slack app, you can access Lightning reports and dashboards in recents, favorites, or searches. Users also can open the menu on a report or dashboard to view and share an item.

• Subscribe to Lightning Reports and Dashboards in Slack
  Roll back in time and everything required the user to go into Salesforce. That is changing with every release as Salesforce works to come to its users and integrate with how they naturally work. Have reports and dashboards you want to see regularly? Subscribe to them in the CRM Analytics for Slack app. That means you can avoid going to Salesforce to set up and import the subscription. Users can subscribe to seven reports or dashboards and schedule when they should refresh. The enhancement posts a snapshot of the item for the user and specified recipients directly in Slack.

#3 Going Further with Client-Ready Functionalities

• Dynamic Forms
  Dynamic forms include specific fields that can be shown or hidden based on visibility settings. In the Summer ’20 release, Salesforce allowed for custom objects. Now with Winter ’23, users can build dynamic forms based on accounts, contacts, and opportunities. That represents a significant improvement to dynamic form capability and impact. Looking toward the future, leads come in Spring ’23 and cases in Summer ’23.

• To-Do List
  If you love creating and assigning tasks, this one’s for you. Now you can add a to-do list to the utility bar at the bottom of the Salesforce app. View all your assigned to-do list items, look at details, and act. No matter what page you’re on inside Salesforce, the to-do list is there to pop open when you need it. Check this out if you are in the Enterprise, Performance, or Unlimited editions in Sales Cloud.

• Pipeline Inspection
  This update offers a new way to see pipelines and information related to opportunities. A tabular format includes visual cues for things like increases/decreases to opportunity amounts, close dates (including how many days a deal close has been pushed out), opportunity stage, and the number of days an opportunity has been in that stage. Users can summarize by different metrics, segment by unique financial fields, and in-line edit amounts.

#4 Fun With Flows

The Galvin Technologies team is a big fan of flows. Salesforce keeps providing us with more to love. Winter ’23 gives Flow better functionality and flexibility for admins and developers.

• New Flow Components
  This one is both a timesaver and error reducer. Say goodbye to copy and pasting an element in a flow, then having to remember to delete the original element. The new release introduces a cut and paste option. Now you can cut an element and redirect the path

• Collection Filter Element
  Rather than using a loop, users can use “In” and “Not In” operators to check if a value is included in a collection of other values. This improves performance and cleans up the flow canvas, while also helping with governor limits.

• Scheduled Path to Run After Months
  Scheduled paths were no problem if you wanted them to work after days, hours, or minutes. Notice something missing? Now scheduled paths can run after months with Winter ’23.

#5 New to Nonprofit

Salesforce is investing development time and resources in advancing the Nonprofit CRM. The latest enhancements solve some of the financial and data verification headaches that present serious struggles for nonprofit organizations.

• Recurring Gift Management Self-Service
  Traditionally, stopping recurring gifts is challenging for both donors and the nonprofit. Salesforce is fixing this by allowing donors to easily update their recurring donations with self-service. That gives nonprofits more time to cultivate donors rather than managing support requests. Self-service allows donors to change payment amounts, types, and frequency. The update also makes ACH an available payment method. Leveraging these enhancements requires an Experience Site with Experience Cloud for Nonprofits license. If you were considering an upgrade, this might serve as a great reason to make the switch.

• Gift Refunds
  Offering a refund hasn’t always been a smooth process. Now nonprofits easily can issue full refunds for gifts while also recording them for accounting purposes. The next release goes an additional step by offering partial refunds.

• Data Entry Verification
  Ever receive a donor solicitation for a deceased family member? This common faux pas certainly doesn’t make the nonprofit look good. Salesforce is solving this issue with improved data validation. Through Salesforce Insights, which is part of the Nonprofit license, users can validate email and phone formats. The update also includes a discovery process for finding deceased constituents and updating them in the database.

#6 More to Love with Lightning Web Components and Apex Changes

While Winter ’23 isn’t a big release for this category, there are a few smaller updates of note. Plus, we want you ready for some more significant items hitting beta.

Lightning Web Components (LWC):

• New Out-of-Box Modal Component
  Building Modals used to require significant code to make them look good. Lighting Web Components makes them much easier and now there’s an out-of-box option to create pop-out Modals without needing Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS) styling. This saves time for developers while making the Modals look great.

• Synchronize Component Data without a Page Refresh with RefreshView API
  People commonly want a page refresh, without needing to refresh the browser, when a Component closes or an action happens in a flow. Aura supported this but LWC did not—until now. This means users now can keep their window and screen looking consistent after updating data. The new feature is only available in beta, but already is proving a great benefit for custom developers

• Access Iframe Content
  Previously, security issues arose when embedding a company’s website in Salesforce. That is changing with the Winter ’23 release as Salesforce works to operate more like a web app. Now admins and developers can display a website or webpage inside of a Flow Screen Component.

Apex:

• Use MuleSoft DataWeave Library to Import CSVs
  Uploading an Excel spreadsheet and having it generate records has always been difficult in Salesforce and required a significant amount of manual programming. With Salesforce’s acquisition of MuleSoft, this now can be done with a simple line of code. We’re talking taking a task that took hours of programming and now it being ready in a matter of minutes.

• New Order of Execution Diagram
  Salesforce just released a new diagram that shows what happens when a record gets updated. No more digging around to find it. If a setup includes process builders, flows, and lots of automation, the diagram shows the order of events to create the update.

• Call Invocable Actions from Apex
  Developers now can call a subset of standard and custom invocable actions directly from their Apex code. Think Chatter posts, notifications, and actions from a flow. This opens up the capabilities possible when custom development is needed.

#7 A Few Other Features

We wanted to get two other features, currently in beta, on your radar. These are both poised to offer significant process improvements for developers.

• Salesforce Code Builder
  The new Code Builder environment eliminates the need for extensive set up and extensions in the development environment. Anything related to the code now sits inside Salesforce accessible directly through the web browser.

• DevOps Center
  The new DevOps Center streamlines deployment of code. Developers previously had to use third-party apps to deploy code between environments. This new feature is a step in the right direction for eliminating that. Salesforce needs to keep improving this to make it a true game-changer, but the initial version in beta looks promising.

Learn More

The highlighted updates represent some of the biggest timesavers and process improvers from the release as they apply to the general population of users. However, this is just a small sampling of what Winter ’23 offers, especially when it comes to the broader ecosystems of licenses and products. Make time to dig deeper and ensure there aren’t other enhancements beneficial to your organization. Learn more by checking out these helpful resources:

• Winter ’23 Release Notes – Find in-depth details on new features and updates
• Winter ’23 Release Highlights Trailhead – Explore product updates and discover all the new features in a fun learning environment in under three hours
• Salesforce for Nonprofits Winter ’23 Release Notes – Get the ins and outs of all enhancements to the nonprofit CRM
• Admin Release Countdown: Get Ready for Winter ’23 – Mark down important dates for the release and prepare your sandbox

Winter ’23 delivers many opportunities to level up the way your organization uses Salesforce. To get the most out of this release, schedule time with the Galvin Technologies team. 

Winter is coming and we’re ready.