Salesforce Winter ‘25 – The Top Features

With the Salesforce Winter ‘25 release coming soon (Sept 9^th, Oct 4^th, or 12^th) along comes a range of new features and updates. We dug through hundreds of pages of release notes to pick out the key features that will impact you – the business user of Salesforce. While there are plenty of other changes that occur “under the hood”, we focus on the changes that you can see and use every day.

Dynamic Highlights Panel

The panel at the top of a record page that previously could display only 10 fields can now display up to 12 fields in two rows. It is also dynamic which means we can turn fields on/off depending on record attributes, user attributes, and even device attributes. This means we could have a simpler version with fewer fields for mobile devices.

Account Plans in Sales Cloud

Account Plans allow you to grow key accounts strategically by researching and analyzing accounts, setting objectives with actionable metrics, and keeping tabs on growth and development.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited editions and Einstein 1 Sales Edition.

When: This feature will be available in production on a rolling basis after the Winter ’25 release is complete and available to all customers in Mid to late November 2024. The feature is only accessible in sandboxes after it’s available in production. To see the feature in sandboxes, run the Match Production Licenses tool or request a refresh after the feature is available in production.

View opportunity details in the dashboard (1); create a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) Analysis (2); capture the customer needs and market dynamics (3); and focus on clear, measurable objectives with metrics (4). To visualize key stakeholders, view the relationship map (5).

How: Go to the new Account Plans page in Setup and turn on Account Plans. Then, configure the Account Plans object in the Object Manager, add the Account Plans related list to the Account object, and optionally set up Relationship Maps.

Sales Cloud Setup

With the new Sales Cloud Setup feature (also known as Sales Cloud Go) you can view all features available with the edition and licenses that you have, and turn on features with a click.

Not only can you explore the capabilities of unused and new sales features, but you also get links to supplemental resources, a summary of the steps for configuring each feature, with quick access to each feature’s Setup page.

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Pro Suite, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Einstein 1 Sales Edition editions.

Einstein Report Formula Generation

Creating formulas in Salesforce reports is not a simple task but with Einstein Report Formula Generation, you can now create row-level and summary formulas by simply describing calculations in plain language. Einstein takes care of the technical details, from identifying relevant data to suggesting a formula (no advanced expertise needed).

To enable Einstein in Salesforce: go to Setup, enter “Einstein Setup” in the Quick Find box, and select it. Then, turn on Einstein. (you need a Salesforce edition that includes Einstein features).

Where: This change applies to Lightning Experience in Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions with Einstein 1 Sales Edition or Einstein 1 Service Edition and the DC Report GPT add-on. Einstein generative AI is available in Lightning Experience.

For more details, check out the release notes:

https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=release-notes.rn_rd_reports_formula_generation.htm&release=252&type=5

Security Enhancements

There has been a significant improvement in the administration of security features in the last couple of releases and this one also continues this theme. While these changes are unseen by business users, they do make your Admin’s job easier and allow faster troubleshooting of problems related to access to data.

Admins can now select a user and find what is providing them access to permissions with the Access Granted By feature:

Einstein Case Management (Beta)

Case Management in the Service Cloud also gets an injection of Intelligence with the beta release of Einstein Case Management. Beta programs are not ready for real work just yet but you can certainly take a look and see what is coming – likely in Production for the next release.

This new feature will improve customer service with near real-time insights that help agents quickly identify and prioritize cases based on urgency, status, customer effort score, and service level agreement (SLA) targets. Einstein Case Management dashboards show minutes-latency metrics that help your team deliver more informed, personalized service. Plus, with the new Flag to Supervisor flow, agents can instantly alert supervisors about case developments.

Where: This change applies to Service Cloud in Lightning Experience in Enterprise and Unlimited editions for an additional cost.

Salesforce Archive (Pilot)

Data storage on the Salesforce platform is something that needs to be managed carefully so you do not exceed your allocation and need to purchase extra storage. This can be a real problem if you have large volumes of data or regulations requiring long-term storage.

Salesforce Archive provides a native solution to archive expired or unused records in external, low-cost storage while still allowing you to view these records directly from your Salesforce org.

Salesforce Archive will become available to production orgs on a rolling basis starting in November 2024. For more assistance with product availability, contact your account executive.

How: When it’s released for production use, Salesforce Archive is purchased as an add-on license. For pricing information, contact your account executive.

Conditional Formatting

Making records stand out on a plain text page is something we have wanted for many years. While there is very scarce information available about this new feature it does appear that some visual clues in the shape of coloured icons can be applied to individual fields to highlight them. These clues can be applied dynamically too as the example of customer sentiment shows below.

Agentforce

While not part of the Winter ‘25 release, you can expect to hear plenty about Agentforce at the Dreamforce conference to be held in San Francisco in late September 2024. Agentforce essentially turbocharges the chatbot features with AI in some very clever and innovative ways. Many critics are heralding the fact that AI is finally starting to deliver some real value. Stay tuned to the Salesforce+ broadcast for more details if you cannot make it to Dreamforce this year.

At KeyNode Solutions, a leading San Diego Salesforce Partner, we want to keep our visitors and clients up to date with the latest information. If you have any questions about this release do not hesitate to contact the team at KeyNode Solutions at hello@keynodesolutions.com or call 1-858-215-5371.