Spring '24 Abridged

The Salesforce Discord Collective Presents:
THE SPRING 24 RELEASE NOTES - ABRIDGED
You’ll notice there’s not that many AI stuff actually released. Half-baked Hype ? In MY Salesforce?! :pika:

CRITICAL STUFF

Locale Codes Change (mostly for Spanish speaking countries) as SF migrates from JDK to ICU Locale Codes. If you’re an international org, study impact now as rolling activation will end in 2025.
Probably the most minor change I’ve ever put in Critical : The Publish and Preview Buttons in Experience Builder are now Swapped. For “logical order and consistency”. Habitual users beware.
Implemented SAML a LONG time ago ? Check if you’re affected by this SAML Framework migration which can break your SSO otherwise.

GENERAL STUFF

Dynamic Forms get Cross Object Fields, say goodbye to formulas pulling information from the Parent. Also tell you Field API Names thank heck.
Dynamic Actions are now set in the Lightning App Builder instead of Page Layout, also are compatible with Mobile now.
You can Translate Related List Labels in Dynamic related lists now
MFA switches from Forced Enablement to Annoyance-As-A-Service for non-compliant users (still enabled by default for new orgs).
If you don’t have Activity Capture and are using GMAIL, Salesforce made logging mails simpler and honestly pretty cool.
Salesforce now warns you when you try to create the sorry excuse for a field that is multi-select picklists. If you’re wondering what to do instead, the answer has mostly always been “use a related junction object instead”.
Salesforce remembered that having Profiles that have CRUD to stuff by default is bad and is now pushing a new profile for Minimum Access - API Only Integrations instead of the new-but-already-old Salesforce API Only Systems Integration
The Mobile App is getting ever more offline ready. I don’t know when Salesforce will finish this, but existing offline app sellers beware.
The BULK API now retries with smaller chunks before failing, which is pretty awesome
Sales get a new homepage like the contact, lead and opp ones. This seems to be Salesforce’s push to be slightly more “out-of-the-box” with industry-standard reports. In the same vein "Lead Intelligence View" "Contact Intelligence" and "Account Intelligence" are basically a prettier report on Activities but is nice.
Experiences now have a list of past Site Publications to make finding who put the cat gif in the homepage easier.
Forecasts can now be grouped and viewed in tabs, include external data and opp splits, and you can see adjustments in columns next to the original data instead of just a window on hover.
AI-powered Search for Case Answers is now GA. Feature looks good, and the team gets "best screenshot award" for making me smile.
Gen AI now works in some EU and AMER languages instead of just English. Which is nice, but as always well see bias that is stronger.
Field service has a Document Builder now. Looks like a possible replacement for conga et. al, except for now it’s half-baked and for Field Service only.
Custom Object Slugs for Objects allow you to resolve http://my.site.com/mytripname/tips instead of http://my.site.com/a01561000000Mjya/list-view
Commerce has Tons of pages of release notes, which resolve to "We did more components to avoid you coding everything. Also, they mostly all require code to use or turn on. Oh and people don’t lose their cart when they login anymore".

SERVICE

Omni Supervisor New Page Builder and custom Tabs
Email to Case gets improvements. I had flashbacks when I read this title, but now it turns out these are actually improvements.
Bots get Async Components which can do a variety of stuff from Authentication to calling external systems. They can also send dynamically generated files (a feature they loved so much they published it twice) though the “Flows can populate ContentVersions with information” is news to me (apex: see here). Disambiguation allows you to catch intents in the wild and use them in your model if you see fit, and automated translations for Dialogs helps you go faster.
Status-Based Capacity and Sensitive Data Obfuscation now available in MIAW.
In Chat, you can use an API to populate the Pre-chart form instead of doing shitty JS hacks. Also All your agents are John now
The Note isn’t very clear but it looks like you can use Salesforce to leverage other Chat platforms? like Heychat or something ? Big if true. But like … “It’s simple ! Install Appexchanges that don’t exist yet or code it all yourself !!!” is almost doge-worthy.
The Conversation LWC gets more configurable
The SMS Channel looks nice enough but there’s neither location nor pricing information to be found. Seriously tell me how and when and for how much I can buy your stuff

FLOWS

The new repeater component allows users flexibly to add one or multiple instances of data on a single screen, and returns a collection.
The new repeater component allows users flexibly to add one or multiple instances of data on a single screen, and returns a collection.
The new repeater component allows users flexibly to add one or multiple instances of data on a single screen, and returns a collection.
DataTable no longer clears selections after each search.
HTTPCallouts now get an autoconfiguration via external call if you so want.
Display Text and Long Text join the reactivity party
Event-Triggered Flows can now run as the Default Workflow User meaning you can now have async admin-privileged actions done.
Flow’s own version of validation Rules gets applied more places but not in Choices.
Flows now allow you to save with errors which is like nice for when you don’t finish configuring, but is meh Admin practice I feel.
External Services can now handle callbacks up to a year =o. This allows you to get information back from an endpoint you call from Flow via External Services. It also allows Devs to use APEX to call these External Services for the same function.
Activity Capture (and Conversation Insights, but that’s paid) now fire off Platform Events that you can use to trigger flows based on Activity or Insight data
Flows using Email Alerts get listed under the email alert so you can more easily find why you received that sample template.
Release Updates change Sharing and Permissions for users using Flow, so ensure you are still compatible with the release before it starts being an issue. They also validate External Redirections more.

ANALYTICS

Dashboard userfriendliness goes up, with 5 filters up from 3, the (not-too-soon) end of having to delete filters to edit them, the (also not-to-soon) ability to rearrange multiple columns at once and the ability to TRANSFER OWNERSHIP and put Headers and Details in your Dashboards - now for EVERYONE. That last one was Ultimate and Performance only before.
The new Analytics homepage gets Bulk Item Edition and folder sharing management
CRM Analytics has a few very nice feature releases on all fronts this release. It’d be even better if people still knew what this Tableau-but-not-also-maybe-reports (old Wave) was.
Data Cloud releases sum down to "we are integrating Data Cloud and Core more" which is nice and poses the question - “what will the future of databases in Salesforce look like ?”
Data Cloud has lots of AI updates, which shouldn’t be much of a surprise, which sum down to "We gave you an interface so you can exploit the Models you either generate or bring to the platform", and also we integrate with more platforms for data and model ingestion". What I’m wondering is if Data Cloud will stay one product - it seems weird that it is handling stuff related to AI instead of Einstein, while the core of Data Cloud -(the Data Model objects and Data Lake objects) are specific enough to warrant their own blog posts (but not release note, looks like…). BTW, you can use predictions in Flow and use Flows to send data to Data Cloud but the action name proooobably shouldn't stay as-is.

DEVELOPMENT

ANT Tool is deprecated. Not critical because SF CLI covers the functions now, but a moment of silence for our fallen comrade, joining MavensMate in the great hall of Salesforce Tools that Were Awesome When They Came Out And Stayed Useful For A Long While
NULL COALESCING IN APEX. A clamor of joy for all devs.. Have some confetti
UUID v4 Generation
You can now retrieve local or packaged CustomTranslations.
SF Sneakily fixing insecure behavior in Type.forName hiding behind “indeterminate results” to say “woops we had a hole there” lol
You should also read the External Services Callback note
If you have an API-only user that accesses tons of data, you can deactivate the Most Recently Used list
LWC api v60.0 bumps LWC OSS version to 5.0, has breaking changes, careful
New-(ish) record-picker component, uses GraphQL Wire Adapter, can be used Offline
Accessibility
New Distortions for APIs. Forgot wtf those are ? TL;DR “Creates Synthetic Namespaces so that malicious code can’t access data from other components”
Custom Component Instrumentation API allows you to view custom component logs on the browser console
Callouts after restoring to Savepoints finally work
Scratch Orgs Snapshots so you can use persistent states of scratch orgs instead of setting them up from scratch programmatically to ensure that deployments and setup work as designed… ?
Managed Event Subscriptions allow you to handle disconnects and reconnects by sending the last repay Id you have, and receive further events. Also Event Relays can now process events in EU now
In LWR sites, you can now declaratively setup search filters and objects, and spacing/layout controls. You can also Dynamically redirect users to External Websites now whereas you could only dynamic redirects for internal links before.
Mobile LWCs now support Biometric Auth via Mobile Publisher
The Token Exchange Flow is a new OAuth Flow that allows you to handle situations where an IDP needs to handle multiple SPs.
Salesforce implements Refresh Token rotation which will probably become mandatory in a bit. Other OAuth2 flow changes seem to indicate that best practice will be to use External Apps for everything ranging from CI/CD to actual consumer apps.

DOGELAND

:doge: Salesforce Data Pipelines got shoved to “Salesforce Overall” from Analytics but still has no product page or any information on either cost or buying avenue on the entire internet. Dear Salesforce Website People - Maybe Check In With Your Product Teams.
:doge: Some Third Party Product Stopped Working, Here’s Free Advertising For a Competitor
There’s a new monthly release notes page because the Salesforce teams are so disorganized that pushing three releases comprising over 300 pages of releases per year wasn’t enough opportunity
:doge: When you shove a something that functionally resembles something else inside of the same namespace so you end up with a function name that is irrelevant to what the thing actually does. SerializationAccess when ?
:doge: EXPERIENCE NO CHANGES ! LIVE THE FLATNESS THAT IS YOUR EXCITEMENT CURVE
:doge: We forced you to use our proprietary tech but running it is expensive so YOLO for Experience users it’s not like security needs to be good everywhere and everyone has good practices for external users so them not having 2Fa is completely fine we’re sure. (Plus it’s not like said tech just is another global one under the hood anyway). All that to just send you an email with a code in the end anyway ayyyyyyyyyyylmao

This abridged version was graciously written up by the SF Discord

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Spring '24 Abridged

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