Salesforce Winter ‘22 release — what’s new in Salesforce?

Salesforce^® is always ahead of the curve. Autumn has just begun and we already have news about the upcoming Salesforce Winter ‘22 release, rolling out on September 11, October 2, and October 9. Let’s take a look at what major new features and useful enhancements we can expect and how businesses can profit from these latest innovations.

New Flow updates

Always a flow update! Flows are advancing at a breakneck pace becoming more efficient, advanced, and robust. To help you navigate these developments, I’ve highlighted the key new flow additions. 

If you are one of the admins who think that there should be a more seamless way of setting up and configuring triggers in Flow Builder, you will be delighted with the new streamlined Trigger Setup experience. Say goodbye to the old multistep process — now you can choose the triggering object, configure the trigger and set entry conditions within a single window. You can also optimize your Flow for Fast Field updates (a high-performance Flow that runs before the record is saved) and for Actions and Related Records (a more flexible Flow that runs after saving the record.) 

Another time-saver is the new option to send Outbound Messages straight from the Flow Builder. Your SOAP messages can now be forwarded to a chosen external service without any hassle. Simply drag an Action element, find Outbound Message, select the action that has the same object type as the triggering record, and send. No parameters are needed — the triggering record’s ID is passed implicitly.  

Are you a fan of Auto-layout Flows but wish you didn’t have to switch it on and off to make specific path adjustments? Good news — with the new connector, Auto-Layout now supports certain non-consecutive paths. With just one click you can add desired elements (except the End element) and also reroute or delete them as needed. 

But wait there’s more! These are just a few of the many amazing Flow improvements included in this Salesforce release. If you are excited to test them out but don’t know where to start or how to use them within the context of your platform, we will be more than happy to walk you through these new features and help you get the most of them for your business.

Create a better user experience with Dynamic Interactions

Creating interactive user experiences to appeal to ever-growing customer and user expectations is not easy, luckily Salesforce always has a solution for any market need. Previously, you had to allocate a Salesforce developer to write your code and the events that would trigger it. No more. 

With new Dynamic Interactions, developers are still required to create custom Lightning components (i.e. a list, a data entry form, a chart, or a map) but admins can define the interaction between them. As a result, these components will be able to dynamically react to user activity. Once added to Salesforce layouts, they can be used multiple times without the need of relying on the development which will save time and budget while creating an immersive user experience. 

Measure your KPIs with Dynamic Gauge Charts in Dashboards

More dynamic features coming your way! From now on you can move beyond measuring KPIs against static goals and use dynamic values instead. The new Dynamic Gauge Charts can flexibly respond to the changes in your business when connected with report metrics and field values. With this new model, you gain dynamic control over the chart measure, chart target, or maximum value, and in this case target segment values are always percentages, not fixed numbers. To get the most of this feature, make sure that your source reports are set up with the groupings, metrics and filters that you want to showcase in the gauge charts.

N.B. Currently, this option is only available as a Beta feature in Lightning Experience. 

Provide personalized mobile experiences with the Mobile Home feature

Salesforce understands that Mobile Apps are all about convenience and easy access. This is why the Mobile Home feature is exiting beta and will be available for all Salesforce mobile app users on both iOS and Android. This means access to a customizable landing page with personalized information based on preferences. Mobile Home users can choose to see on their Homepage: 

• Reports 
• Recent Records
• Tasks
• Salesforce events 
• Local Calendar(iOS only)
• Favorites (iOS only)

Additionally, these cards can be freely rearranged, removed, and added. This is a fantastic tool to enhance the Salesforce mobile experience — making it more streamlined and user-friendly.   

Improve your Lightning page performance

Everybody knows that load time is a critical factor in user experience. Now Salesforce admins will have more practical tools to improve the speed of their org. The new Lightning Page Performance Analysis provides recommendations based on users’ performance metrics from the last 90 days. The Org-specific Metrics Card covers network latency, browser speed, and the number of cores to give admins a better idea of the loading speed. 

For custom Lightning Components, the Performance Analysis in the App builder will provide convenient alerts to notify the admin if components involve: External CSS, Unminified JavaScript, use of lightning:recordEditForm, a use of layoutType=”FULL”, or the use of lightning:tabFocused listeners. Moreover, admins will receive analysis results with the page’s predicted Experienced Page Time or page load time and the component Performance Breakdown Card with recommendations if needed. 

Last but not least, the performance analysis will run automatically when there is a new page created in the Lightning App Builder and admins will be notified if the performance is poor or moderate and offered respective recommendations. 

Save your time importing data to Tableau CRM

With every release, Salesforce strives to offer a more seamless integration between Tableau CRM and external sources. Many admins will be happy to hear that the Tableau CRM template framework now supports the Snowflake Direct Connector. From now on, it will be possible to import live data directly from Snowflake to provide real-time metrics in dashboards and lenses. This will speed up processes and cut down on admin work. 

What’s the difference between Tableau and Tableau CRM? So pleased you asked! Click here to find out more.

Drive sales with new Forecast category

If you want to boost the capabilities of your Sales team through better sales expectation management, you will be happy to hear about a new collaborative forecasting category. Now apart from the standard four: Pipeline, Best Case, Commit & Closed, you can add the Most likely category to gain more flexibility while predicting and planning your sales cycles. You can find it as a picklist value in the Forecast Category field on opportunities, between the Commit and Best Case categories on the forecasts page, and as a standalone pipeline metric In Pipeline Inspection. Users can also use the Most Likely category to filter their pipelines.

Are you ready for the Salesforce Winter ‘22 Release?

If you stay up to date with every Salesforce release, you know that there is a lot more in store and these are just some of the enhancements available in the Salesforce Winter Release ‘22. If you would like more details on specific features that can improve your business, don’t hesitate to get in touch. We have vast experience guiding our clients through these updates and we will be more than happy to offer customized recommendations.

Mark Hartnady
Head of Architecture
VRP Consulting UK

About the Author

Mark Hartnady is one of our global architecture leaders, based in our London office. Mark has been working with CRM solutions, with a particular focus on the Salesforce platform since 2012 and has been instrumental in transforming enterprises with scalable, extensible solutions in the manufacturing, automotive, hi-tech and media sectors.