Spring '26 Abridged

The Salesforce Discord Collective Presents:
THE SPRING 26 RELEASE NOTES - ABRIDGED
SFXD wishes you all a happy new year, cherished time with loved ones, challenges that are surmountable but interesting, and self-realization through whatever floats your boat.

CRITICAL STUFF

• Time to migrate Connected Apps to External Client Apps because you can no longer create connected apps and even SAML-enabled Connected Apps can now be migrated. “Enhanced security, streamlined packaging” they say. Legacy connected apps still work, but you know how this story ends.
• Same topic, SOAP.login() is being deprecated (for good reasons, passwords are weak) and you now need to use External Apps as well.
• If you got the G2 Root cert email and you’re not lovingly maintaining a cursed relic of an OS, surfing the web with a browser old enough to vote or working in an environment where IT treats root certs like nuclear launch codes (consult your wardens), take a deep breath — this is a boring, routine cert rotation. No action needed.
• If you use Einstein Activity Capture, Microsoft changes their login API and you need to take action in February to maintain access
• It's probably too late to fix it in time, but your SSO is going to get a lot more annoying if your IDP doesn't send valid MFA flags
  

PLATFORM-LEVEL STUFF

• The CABF has announced shorter certificate lifespans, which progressively go down to 47 days by 2029. As per always we’re hoping Salesforce finally supports automated certificate generation via letsencrypt, or at least ingestion, because the current situation is ridiculous.
• mTLS certificates are changing because of Google and if you use CA-based auth you need to take action. Ah, the joys of a decentralized internet…
• Hidden in the IPv6 Notes Salesforce recommends you “[implement] a preferred alternative if you use an IP allowlist to restrict network traffic or you restrict access to Salesforce via IP address”. Hint - they’re pushing you towards mTLS.
• You can setup passkeys as a login method, which ties more to hardware than passwords, and is a nice alternative because passwords are weak (seriously).
• Files: up to 10GB (unless you use chatter or LWR), get malware scans on uploads and downloads, and get a new Delete Files permission to allow users to delete files they can view.
• Salesforce removed the singleaccess endpoint which allowed moving from API Only to UI licences, which… I mean yeah makes sense.

GENERAL STUFF

Turns out without AI slop in my notes, most sections are too small to hold their own, so here’s another big General section. Why don’t I cover all the AI stuff ? Because it’s unstable and pay-gated, and I’ve historically not really covered pay-gated content anyway.

• Salesforce Archive, a product that came out in 2025 is now getting a bit more spotlight meaning it might be ready for use ? The problem is that with Salesforce’s app graveyard starting to fill up (not yet Google’s though), I’m not sure who would migrate to this rather than use an external tool.
• Foundations gets a new Email Builder of which I’m assuming we’ll see a more full fledged version of in Growth soon.
• Dashboards can now leverage LWCs to display information (requires Support activation). Sounds powerful.
• Sharing via Username for dashboards avoids sharing the quarterly results to homonyms, and if you export reports they now can have custom disclaimers. You can also use table settings from report in dashboards, which is a time-saver if you’re reusing the same report in multiple places for table displays.
• Translations get filters on export and also import valid entries if a few are invalid making sandbox promotions less horrible. Also handle custom labels translation better than before.
• Request Approval Component allows users to send Records for Flow Approval from a record page. Approvals also get easier step debugging which is a great positive differentiator from the previous approvals tech
• Scale Center is free for most editions and shows Slow Pages and Queries as well as what can be improved and Code Insights via ApexGuru. I’d remembered this was a paid offering, so either I was wrong or it’s changed.
• Mobile gets actionnable notifications (you can tap on stuff in the notification to take actions directly), matching Home Assistant features from 2021, and allows selecting files to upload later if you’re offline
• EAC storing emails as activity has advantages mainly on how you can report on stuff, also comes with cost on how you used to report on stuff
• Field Audit Trail now allows downloading the metadata and more importantly, reverting changes to tracked fields via their explorer feature and you can now track 200 fields up from… 60 I think was the previous one ?

SPECIALIZED CLOUDS

• In Experience Cloud world, we get dynamic redirects configurable by Admin, GenAI-based SEO (blergh) and some nice Task/Activity Components. Also Partner Cloud is now its own section ? And contains stuff like pre-built flows and referral fields which like… sure ?
• In Service World, case timeline is a beautiful thing, Milestones get pause and resume automations and are viewable on parent and child records Organization Wide Addresses need verification before sending case emails, you can now view the Attachments the customer originally uploaded straight on case details
• Commerce Cloud gets a Request Quote Component, Subscription Bundle Management, Subscription history, and configurable products (plays nicely with the request quote part)
• For Revenue Cloud Promotions Management got added (quite nicely, as well), Price propagation got higher limits and calculation got debugging tools as well as IF statements there’s a plethora of releases regarding usability and minor functions, and quote line import now sucks less. There’s a LOT to read, which still boil down to “we’re building a product, and there’s a ton of new features because it’s just not at parity with our old CPQ, so look at shiny stuff while we migrate mostly small customers despite not selling CPQ anymore so you won’t really have a choice but to migrate soon”

MARKETING

• Despite a lot of updates for Marketing Cloud Next (including some nice tracking for SMS sends and better reporting tools (which finally include deliverability for SMS…)), the current state of the new-new-replacement to ExactTarget (new being Marketing Cloud Growth, new-new being Next) is still “very shiny LLM-driven UX on top of early-stage platform tech” making it unfit for enterprise adoption as of now - as proved by it just now getting a sandbox for emails sends.

FLOWS

• Navigation gets easier with other ways than click and drag to move the canvas and the ability to collapse branches. You can also navigate to Flows in LEX via URL and pass parameters that way.
• You can sort Data Table Records by Column at Runtime and edit Records in the Data Table as well making most third-party datatable components obsolete for quite a few use cases.
• Descriptions keep getting more useful as you can now view the in/oiutput variable descriptions directly from the calling Flow
• New Kanban Component to display records as cards :) and message component to display text in a better way than DisplayText
• Components having their own styles in a Screen flow means you can build geocities-like UIs all over again.
• Flow Analytics tell you how fast or slow your flow runs, as well as completion rates and more.
• Flow Compare Versions allows you to see exactly what changed between two compared versions :)

FIELD SERVICE

• Objective Scoring Formulas change and you need to review impact.
• Optimization and Routing get nice upgrades with Rule Violation Analytics helping you to define where manual adjustements have to be done in violation with your (wrong) ruleset, new easy to consume insights and Optimization now showing you how it ran with request and response files eschewing the need for support contact. Dynamic Scaling is now out of beta as well.
• A setting allows you to get Near Real Time Gantt updates
• LLMs now power Speech-To-Text capture so field service workers can dictate work summaries to fill fields
• Mobile Timesheets and Service Resources now support Flow Data Capture Forms (which now support Lookups, load faster and can be used on Assets and Custom Objects) instead of just LWCs, making personalization easier.

DEVELOPMENT

• Any automation relying on Sharing Calculations should now expect that these can be done asynchronously whether you use Flows or APEX. Help here
• DEPRECATIONS EVERYWHERE ! No more session IDs in Outbound Messages which also get lower Max Timeout value, Large SOQL Queries on Data Cloud can now error out (lmao a data lake that hates scale)
• If you use the olde APEX PDF Rendering Service it’ll change to use the VF one with a Release Update, which may change fonts displayed and general layout.
• You can now get all picklist values by Record Type without making callouts
• Run Relevant Tests (Beta) Salesforce now decides which Apex tests to run on deploy — a double-edged sword that can massively speed up pipelines in Big-Ball-of-Mud orgs, but currently only picks up direct dependencies, ignores indirect chains and dynamic injection, and really needs @IsTest(critical=true) / @IsTest(testFor=…) if you care about quality. Great idea, cautiously useful, not magic.
• You can query Tests and filter them by APEX or Flow. This minor change is interesting tome because it means Salesforce really is investing in the Flow Test infrastructure which is both nice and a consideration for Flow-heavy orgs long-term
• Apex Cursors introduces the new server-side Cursor class to Apex so you can cache and traverse large SOQL result sets in manageable chunks — improving control and performance for big-data processing scenarios (e.g., efficient pagination and incremental record handling) without loading all rows at once.
• LWS Trusted Mode gets pulled back to Beta because Salesforce can’t trust that you won’t run crypto miners on its hardware and require direct work with you to consider enabling it.
• Lightning Out 2.0 gets explicit domain allowlisting, app-id attributes to see which app called in, complex namespace support for ISVs.
• LWC debugging online gets easier with the Error Console which collects and displays non-fatal errors; that’s great as Salesforce just fixed an edge case in rehydration which may in fact lead to errors
• You can use “Complex Template Expressions in LWCs”. "For documentation and examples, see the Lightning Web Components Developer Guide, which they've just now added to the documentation, moving this out of doge.... but maybe next time just link the docs.
• SF is migrating the Lightning Component Library to the new LWC Reference, presumably so models trained on old data can hallucinate links that don’t work.
• You can expose SOQL Queries via Names through the Named Query API which is good, but you should have been doing that via APEX Classes anyway (will be useful for Agents at some point)
• Not really development, but Mulesoft is getting API Policy Governance which seems to be geared for Agents in the release notes, but in reality could be applied in a lot of other places IMO ?
• Salesforce has invented recommended release upgrades for packages and per-org per-namespace debug logging for ISVs, truly visionnary…

AGENTFORCE

• The new Agentforce Builder Canvas View gets more features that were previously only in Script view, because nothing says “stable platform” like having features scattered across different interfaces. Still Beta, naturally.
• You can now connect Agents to Enhanced Chat v2 in the new Agentforce Builder, giving them “context and structure” for conversational messages. Also Beta. Previously you were stuck with Messaging connection and couldn’t remove it, but now you have options! (Beta options)
• The new Agentforce Builder now supports Employee Agents, complete with prebuilt templates to get you started faster on your Beta journey. Your agents now appear in multiple list views regardless of where you created them, because consistency is… eventual.
• Validation checks for agent actions are here to help you build “high-quality agents” by actually telling you when things are broken. Revolutionary! (Beta)
• {Developers} You can now Expose REST and AURA methods as Actions, also add custom Components in Setup for AI Agents so when things break because of the LLM we can blame your code instead of AI.
• You can now connect Agents to Data Libraries in the new Agentforce Builder via the Answer Questions with Knowledge action, ensuring agents are “grounded in your unique business data” which is definitely what your users want rather than hallucinated nonsense.
• Article Answers retirement date pushed back: Now February 28, 2026 (was Dec 31st last release). Please migrate to Generative Knowledge Answers before your bots stop delivering content entirely. Second warning.
• For the adventurous: Lightning Types MCP Tool uses LLMs to generate LightningTypeBundle metadata for custom Lightning types. Developer Preview, which is even earlier than Beta. Salesforce DX MCP Server will AI-generate your schema.json, editor.json, and renderer.json files because apparently we’re using AI to build AI now. Or to Convert JS to TypeSCript because non-deterministic conversions for enterprise software is 10/10
• Model Musical Chairs continues: Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude 3 Haiku are both getting rerouted to Claude Sonnet 4.5 on February 26, 2026. Test your prompts now because “expected responses can change.” That’s approximately one year from their introduction to deprecation. Plan accordingly.

GENERAL ADVISORY: With monthly platform releases, pervasive Beta features, model deprecations happening within 12 months, and Salesforce’s own pivot toward “AI as intelligent suggestion engine, not autonomous actor” (per their own research showing 78% of workers abandon AI agents after incorrect responses), this is a high-volatility environment. The architectural principle here is treating AI as a suggestion layer with deterministic business logic validation—not as a production-critical autonomous system. Resist FOMO. Evaluate your actual needs. Build governance frameworks before building agents. And maybe wait for things to, you know, actually leave Beta before betting your business processes on them.

DOGELAND

• :doge: Japanese Voice Reeeeeeeeeeeee-brandoooooo. It’s so bad there’s even a website for all the shitty renames now Also minor Trust updates which don’t fix the fact that Trust often doesn’t report incidents until after they’ve been confirmed by the community.
  
• :doge: "we broke stuff irremediably with our release which obiously was never tested so we’re cancelling it" is a certainly a release note
• :doge: A year and a half after release, Unified Knowledge is Dead, further cementing that you really shouldn’t invest in bleeding edge Salesforce product unless you can afford the off-ramping should they fail (or get failed).
• :doge: You can use “Complex Template Expressions in LWCs”. "For documentation and examples, see the Lightning Web Components Developer Guide." they say. Guide they don’t link. And which doesn’t contain the information. What are complex templates ? Which expressions can you use ? Who knows ? Not this guy !
  

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