Winter 24 Release for Small but Mighty P10 Organizations
My intent is to provide support and encouragement to small organizations who primarily rely on Power of Ten license grants. Winter 24 upgrade just arrived. I'm on the last release group now so everyone has this. It has taken me a couple of weeks to write this because there are lots of features implications to deal with and because flow is so broken very badly. More on that later. I hope by reading this your experience goes more smoothly.
Here is the full article. I present below only a outline due to Trailblazer space limitations. https://mighyforce.dreamhosters.com/2023/10/unpacking-winter-24-for-power-of-ten-license-holders/
If you're new to Salesforce, upgrading is automatic, but there is a lot an admin must do to keep from creating degradation over time. It's best done every release. My intention is to guide largely solo admins with Power of Ten licenses. I don't cover add-on features or features not part of Power of Ten.
First, here is the SF documentation. It's overwhelming. Second, there is a section that is a must read for most admins. It's How and When Do Features Become Available. Here's what I found that might require some user notification or help:
- Account logos, account news, and auto-fill of account info from national-level organizations are gone.
- The Analytics app now opens reports as if it were a console implementation. You can have multiple reports open on different in-window tabs also. Seems nice but it's pretty different.
- The activity tab inside a lightning page, typically on your contact, gets updated and looks different for all users immediately. It's pretty complicated.
- If you have users that pause screen flows, you need to be aware that screen elements will behave differently now.
You can read more about these at the full blog.
- Now onto new features that can be taken advantage of on your own timetable. Here are some changes that you'll have to configure and setup to keep up with my top highlights in Winter 24.
- For any of these features, see full article for more screen shots and details on how to enable.
- 1. Dynamic forms on (mostly) all objects and mobile! Dynamic forms on desktop supports in-line editing AND modal editing. Inline Edit works intuitively on the desktop. And modal editing also works via the edit button.
I believe mobile is a must these days... if you aren't using it, you're folks have to wait to enter or use data rather than use mobile wherever the data encounter is needed. The same third-most used record page is shown below on mobile. It's quite nice to make fields disappear on mobile since space is such a premium! I liked the same page on mobile very well. There is no in-line edit on mobile dynamic forms but the modal edit function seems to be identical to the desktop and very nice.
2. Change Dashboard owner. This is great. Previously when someone left, you had to recreate their dashboards to keep using them. You do have to enable this feature in setup. If you haven't visited the reports and dashboard settings page in setup lately, this is what mine looks like. Lots of good stuff behind most of these checkboxes.
3. Mass Quick Actions on Related Lists on Lightning Record Pages on desktop. Near as I can tell this is a desktop feature only. This isn't really new this release but is going GA. You can enable for a bunch of locations from the classic page laayout related list configuration and if you have adopted Dynamic Related Lists you must also separately enable on each of those component.
4. Permission sets. When you go to a permission set, there is now a new generated summary. This is quite nice. It shows you the meta data associated with a permission set, what permission set groups it's part of, and what makes it up in collapsible groups: system/app permissions with explanation, object access, and field permissions by object.
We also get a nice time-saver when editing field permissions on objects in permission sets and (presumably) profiles. When you open the permissions for configuration, you now have a “check all” box.
Features I’ve checked into or mentioned in the preview but don’t recommend yet for P10 orgs after release checkout.
A. I regret to say that my dearest feature friend, Lightning Flow, is on this list this time as a huge disappointment and delivers severe problems this release. There's a known issue since Sep 11 so a fix should be coming.
This bug makes it impossible in my org to revise almost all flows that are already existing or to deploy new flows that get records. I tried to find workarounds so I could tell you about cool new features, but honestly… the bug blocks practical access to almost all of them. It’s time to send your flow admin on vacation and hope the fix comes soon. It’s a complete development stop at my org. My recommendation is don’t try these new flow features yet as you'll just get caught in the quagmire of the above bug:
- Flow builder has some new call-outs to support Post.
- Reactive flows. I would show but we can’t even edit existing deployed flows to add reactivity with this above bug. I made a pretty cool video using a brand new flow on reactivity but I had to do things to get around another bugs that are so poor practice that I’m not sharing the video. I’ve had to postpone user requested upgrade projects that rely on flow over the sad state of flow at this point. I sadly recommend you do so also until this is addressed.
- Screen Error message. This is a new type of validation capability.
- Transform: It’s going to be very cool to have a new collection operator that allows mapping from record collections.
B. Intelligence View for Contacts and Leads. When you enable this under Sales -> Contact Intelligent View Setup (can be disabled) and add a button to your contact object (guidance provided on the setup page), your users can choose a new button on the contact home tab called "Intelligent View". Out of the box it shows you contacts created this quarter in some categories: those with no activity, those with no upcoming tasks, those with tasks today, those with tasks overdue. You can quickly get to a list of activities without leaving the page. You can mark them as important, email them, edit or change ownership to someone else. You can add filters and change columns displayed. It's sort of a super-list view although I'm not sure what utility my users will find with it. You can do the same thing for leads.
C. I had mentioned that Sales Enablement became available to Enterprise Editions in my preview. It's true. I enabled it, set up it all up, but there is no need to get excited as far as I can tell. The feature is limited to "Quick Cadences" which means it's a single step and no automation. I can't figure out a use case for it. It seems to be freemium bait only.
I do want to add that I believe a brand-new-to-Salesforce small P10 organization should strongly consider adopting NPC now unless there are severe functional roadblocks to doing so. Adopting Salesforce is not a quick process anyway and you’ll need to focus on small functional steps in adoption and I think NPC is ready for that (no experience to back that up, however). Adopting NPSP now and then needing to change will be a lot of pain that I suspect mahy can’t afford.
I also want to reiterate that existing orgs need not (and indeed cannot) migrate now. That said, NPC has features that we all need to be small but mighty, and we need to get everyone back into one boat as soon as possible so rising tides lift all boats. You will note very few new features in NPSP and I believe it will stay that way forever.
I am not covering NPC because I just don’t have access to credible orgs or experience to share yet. I hope to change that in the coming releases but there just is no way for me to do that yet. I don’t cover paid products that aren’t P10. I don’t cover Slack because they continue to not give free licenses to religious nonprofits. When we limit diversity, we limit everyone.
#Sales Cloud #Nonprofit #New Releases
@Terry Cole - I don't operate in the NP space, but want to complement you for such an insightful recap and detail into the features of each release. Plenty of food for thought for those us in the enterprise space that may have overlooked a few things.
I agree with your assessment of the free Sales Engagement licenses, but it certainly opened my mind to the capabilities of the paid product.
