The list of Spring ’19 features below apply to both Salesforce Lightning Experience and Classic.
There are additional Spring ’19 features available to Salesforce Classic Only, Lightning Experience only, Community Enhancements, Other Enhancements in the Spring ’19 Release Highlights post.
Note: These features are not listed in any specific order.
- Introducing the new Flow Builder! This replaces the Adobe Flash tool Cloud Flow Designer to build flows. Improvements were made to consolidate data elements like Fast Create and Record Create into one or determine which variable is needed. Note: Flow Builder isn’t supported in Internet Explorer 11 and earlier.
There is an option for now where you can still access flows with both flow tools. Cloud Flow Designer is disabled by default, but you can turn it back on by going to Process Automation Settings and deselect Disable access to Cloud Flow Designer. When Cloud Flow Designer is re-enabled, you see the New Flow in Cloud Flow Designer button on the Flows page. When both tools are enabled, a flow opens in the tool that it was built with. The flow page also shows which tool the flow was built with.
2. Install process or flow templates from a managed package or create them in your org. You may find the need to templatize a process or flow and make tweaks to it or install templates from a managed package, clone them and make tweaks accordingly. You can mark a process or flow as a template from the view properties page in a process or the edit screen in a flow.
3. Respond to Salesforce Errors with Processes or Flows:
Processes and flows now support standard platform events – Batch Apex Platform Event (BatchApexErrorEvent) and Platform Status Alert Event (PlatformStatusAlertEvent) – in addition to your own custom platform events.
4. Flow Screen Enhancements:
- Use the Display Image component to insert images in flow screens.
- Use the Address component to display a complete address form.
5. With Salesforce Connect, you can create a process or flow that can query, create and update data that’s stored in an external system. Event processes, invocable processes, screen flows, and autolaunched flows all support external objects. However, record-change processes don’t support external objects, so as a workaround, create a process that initiates when a platform event message is received.
6. Your process that starts when a platform event is received can now handle scheduled actions, which can create or update data that’s stored outside of Salesforce via external objects.
7. Schedule processes to execute immediately by setting zero hours or days. Use scheduled actions to avoid governor limits since scheduled actions are executed in a separate transaction from immediate actions.
8. (Critical Update) Return Null Values in Process and Flow Formulas (Critical Update): Enables process and flow formulas to return null values when the calculations involve a null record variable or null lookup relationship field. Without this update, when the formula does not return a null value, the process or flow returns an unhandled exception. With this update, the formula will always return a null value.
9. “Stop Automated Field Updates from Suppressing Email Notifications” Critical Update Auto-Activation Postponed from Spring ‘19 to March 1, 2020.
10. Test Process Scheduled Actions and Flow Resume Events with Apex
Use the stopTest Apex method to execute processes’ pending scheduled actions and resumes flows that are waiting for a time-based resume event. Previously, apex tests couldn’t validate scheduled actions or whether a flow resumes.
11. (Beta) Check a Field’s References Before You Edit It: In a sandbox org, you can view the references to a custom field, such as in a formula, layout, or Apex class using the “Where is this used?” button.
12. Custom Metadata: Configure Default Field Values with Custom Metadata Types: You can reference a custom metadata type record in a default value and maintain that value in one place. Note: The formula editor does not include custom metadata field types. Reference the custom metadata field value manually: $CustomMetadata.CustomMetadataTypeAPIName.RecordAPIName.FieldAPIName
13. Transition Assistant replaces the current Lightning Experience Migration Assistant. The new assistant provides tasks and tools to help manage activities in the different phases of your Lightning transition: Discover, Roll Out and Optimize. This will be available shortly after the Spring 19 upgrade.
14. Create reports and dashboards on Einstein Insights by creating a custom report with Opportunities or Accounts as the primary object and Einstein Opportunity Insights or Einstein Account Insights, respectively, as the secondary object.
15. Grant Access to Records, Report and Dashboard Folders, and List Views by Territory: In Setup, Sharing Settings, when you create a sharing rule, select Territories or Territories and Subordinates and then specify the territory(ies).
16. (Critical Update) Enable Manual Account Sharing in Enterprise Territory Management
Activating this will change the TerritoryManual reason code in AccountShare records to Territory2AssociationManual and is required to let users share accounts manually with territory groups. This takes up to 2 weeks after activation before changes kick in.
17. Customizable Forecasting is scheduled for retirement as of Summer ’20. Migrate to Collaborative Forecasts.
18. Original territory management is scheduled for retirement as of Summer ’20. Migrate to Enterprise Territory Management.
19. Privacy Setting Enhancements:
- Enforce email tracking privacy in a new setting. Data Protection and Privacy needs to be enabled. Then search for Deliverability in the Quick Find box, select Enforce email privacy settings.
- If a customer chooses Email Opt Out or the Don’t Market email privacy setting, your company should only send them non-commercial emails. Prevent reps from sending emails to people with these privacy settings by removing their Send Non-Commercial Email permission.
- If a list email sent has errors, you receive a delivery summary with a CSV file that lists the status for each person the email was sent to as well as their email privacy settings.
20. Email Enhancements:
- For orgs created in Spring ’19 and later, the 5,000 email daily limit is also enforced for email alerts, simple email actions, Send Email actions, and REST API. Orgs created prior to Spring 19, the 5,000 email limit pertains to emails sent via Apex and Salesforce APIs except the REST API.
- When creating new DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) keys, you can now choose between 1024-bit and 2048-bit RSA key sizes. Previously, they were created as 1024-bit.
21. Create a follow-up task with a click of a button. Key information is copied over from the original task.
22. You can now embed videos in Salesforce Knowledge and Lightning Knowledge.
23. Sales teams can see sales forecasts for 15 months or custom fiscal periods at a glance. Previously, the limit was 12.
24. Query All Files permission: With the new Query All Files permission, View All Data users can query ContentDocument and ContentVersion and retrieve all files, including those in non-member libraries and unlisted groups.
25. (Pilot) Permission Set Groups: Group Permission Sets Based on User Tasks for Easier Assignment: Allows admins to group permission sets into a single permission set group.
26. Connect Your Users to More External Data with Increased Hourly Limits
27. Test and troubleshoot your external object connections using validator diagnostic tool.
28. Added 10 languages and locales for South African and Indian customers.
29. Authentication Enhancements:
- Authenticate Your Users with Certificates: Salesforce now provides certificate-based authentication
- Configure My Domain with Login Discovery to simplify the login process for users. Rather than requiring users to login with a username and password, My Domain Login Discovery page prompts the user to enter a unique identifier such as an email address or phone number. Then, they are prompted to authenticate based on the identifier they provided.
- Streamline Connected App Integrations with OAuth 2.0 Endpoints Create Lightweight Contactless External Identity Users (Generally Available)
- Reduce the overhead of managing external identity users by creating users without contact information. You can just maintain a user database for identity purposes. You do have the option of adding contact records later when you have more information. This feature applies to users with the External Identity license.
- The minimum size requirement for the consumer secret (referred to as the client secret in OAuth 2.0) has been increased from at least 8 characters to 32.
- (Beta) View and Revoke Devices with Device Management. Use Device Management to track and monitor which devices are accessing your org.
- Redirect Users to Your Website After Self-Registration Instead of Your Community Home Page. Developers can add the new salesforce-self-register-starturl-enabled meta tag to your website’s Embedded Login.
- With Platform Encryption: Cache-Only Key Service, you can store your key material outside of Salesforce using a key service of your choice. The Cache-Only Key Service fetches the key material on demand. These keys are not persisted in any Salesforce system of record or backups. Note: This is only available for customers who have purchased the Cache-Only Key Service add-on subscription.
- Sync data in most fields, field history and feed tracking changes, from Setup on your own schedule. (1) shows you what data requires a sync, (2) the Sync button allow you to sync the data with your active key material and (3) show the current data sync status.
30. Platform Encryption Enhancements:
- (Generally Available) Encrypt Data in Custom Rich Text Area Fields
- Filter Encrypted Data with Exact Match Case-Insensitive Deterministic Encryption (Beta)
31. Event Monitoring Enhancement: The new Apex Unexpected Exception event type in the EventLogFile object captures info regarding unexpected exceptions in Apex code execution.
32. You can now use the <apex:detail> and <apex:enhancedList> components together on a Visualforce page using the standard controller for custom objects.
33. Enjoy Increased Data Storage: Data storage is increasing from 1 GB to 10 GB. Data storage increase starts in late March 2019.
34. (Beta) Enforce Field-Level Security Permissions for SOQL Queries:
Developers can now use the WITH SECURITY_ENFORCED clause to check for field- and object-level security permissions on SOQL SELECT queries, starting with API version 45.
35. Leverage Extended Functionality for Lightning Web Components with Salesforce CLI: Version 45 of the salesforcedx aggregate plug-in releases on February 9, 2019. Install the pre-release version of version 45 now to build Lightning Web Components: sfdx plugins:install salesforcedx@pre-release.
36. Build Your Own Salesforce CLI Plug-In with Open-Source Tools: Use the Salesforce Plug-In Generator to build a custom Salesforce CLI plugin using Node.js.
37. Simplify Lightning Web Component Development with the VS Code Extension Pack: Install the Salesforce Extension Pack from the VS Code Marketplace. To work with Lightning Web components in VS Code prior to the release of the Salesforce Extensions for VS Code v45, install the extension pack, the Lightning Web Component extension, along with the pre-release version of Salesforce CLI.
38. Keep Your External Data Up to Date with Change Data Capture (Generally Available): Get near-real-time Salesforce record changes, and synchronize those corresponding records in an external data store. Change Data Capture publishes change events for changes to Salesforce records (record creations, record updates, record deletes, and record undeletes).
39. Scale Your Event-Based Apps with High-Volume Platform Events (Generally Available): Use high-volume platform events to publish and process millions of events efficiently. High volume platform events is only available in API 45. High-volume platform event can be defined via the user interface or through Metadata API (eventType set to HighVolume).
40. New Status Code for Event Publishing Failure: When publishing an event message fails due to a temporarily unavailable service, the returned SaveResult contains the error with a status code of PLATFORM_EVENT_PUBLISHING_UNAVAILABLE.
41. (Generally Available) Save Time by Cloning Sandboxes: You can clone a sandbox rather than from production. Click the “Clone” link next to the completed sandbox. You can also create a new sandbox by select the sandbox to clone from the Create From dropdown.
42. Simpler Format for User Email Addresses in Sandboxes: When you create or refresh a sandbox, Salesforce will now appends .invalid to all user email addresses. xxxx@email.com.invalid will replace xxxx=email.com@example.com.
43. Lightning Web Components available to developers
44. New or changes Aura Components (formerly known as Lightning Components) available to developers
45. New or Changes to Apex Classes or Interfaces
46. New or Changes to API
47. Salesforce CLI: New and Changed Commands
48. Deprecated Default Values Without Square Brackets for Array, Set, and List Attributes: To set a default value for array, set and list attribute types, you now need to surround comma-separated values with []; for example, default=”[‘apple’, ‘watermelon’, ‘mango’]”, otherwise you may experience unexpected results.
49. Use lightning:unsavedChanges in the Aura Component in standard and console navigation apps to inform the UI of unsaved changes.
50. Create Custom Big Objects from Setup. Previously, you could only create big objects from a metadata api.
51. Include Even More Special Characters in Passwords. You can now use these special characters in your Salesforce password: ! ” # $ % & ‘ ( ) * + , – . / : ; < = > ? @ [ \ ] ^ _ ` { | } ~
52. Verify That User Credentials Are Secure When Users Access Sessions:
On the Login History page, view the HTTP login method (POST, GET, or Unknown) on the Login History page. For example, if the user is using a GET request to log into Salesforce, the user may be inadvertently exposing user credentials via a URL.
53. Change Set Enhancements:
- Do more on the change set pages: There are links added to the Inbound Change Set page to initiate validation and deployment operations for both deployed and undeployed change sets. On the Outbound Change Set page, there are links to upload or clone change sets.
- “Lightning Component Bundle” has been renamed to “Aura Component Bundle” and “Lightning Web Component Bundle” is a new change set item.