What You Need to Know

It’s a bit early to be talking about presents under the tree, hidden eggs in the backyard, or a rogue tooth left under your pillow (depending on the current degree of your dental hygiene), but a great gift is on its way. Salesforce is about to release their Winter ‘23 notes and that has quite a few of us Trailblazers giddy with glee. And just like always, Salesforce is delivering on the goods. Read on to see the 8 features from the Winter ‘23 release that we’re excited about here at Bitwise Industries. Of course, in no particular order of awesomeness.

#1–To-do List

Track and sort all of your tasks with the To-do List. This feature is helpful because it allows users to see what tasks are assigned to them in one actionable component that is docked in the Utility Bar. Additionally, Sales Engagement users will be able to see, sort, and organize tasks from records or cadences in that same space. Learn more.

#2–Dynamic Forms

Dynamic Forms will now be available for Accounts, Contacts, Person Accounts, and Opportunities with Winter ‘23. This upgrade will give users the opportunity to place fields anywhere or automate the process by migrating your Record Detail component to use Dynamic Forms with the click of a button. Learn more. 

#3–Use Screen Flows as Cadence Steps

Winter ‘23 grants sales managers the ability to specify a screen flow as a cadence step in the Cadence Builder. This allows sales reps to create a case, event, or task to perform another action, and initiate the step for a target directly from their Work Queue or Sales Engagement component on target records. Learn more. 

#4–Dynamic Related List Filters

This might not look like a major update, but it will be very helpful for many who want to do more with Dynamic Related List Filters. This feature will include multiple filter values from picklist fields instead of the old way of selecting only one picklist value. Learn more.

#5–Improved Fields Panel

This new panel design minimizes scrolling by organizing each data source’s measures, dimensions, and date fields in separate tabs while giving users the ability to add and work with multiple standard or live datasets, Salesforce objects, or Customer Data Platform data sources to easily build queries with the Improved Fields Panel. Learn more.

#6–Collaborative Forecasts

Winter ‘23 continues the trend of enhancing forecasting options. The bullet list below highlights the five upgrades slated for the upcoming release. Learn more.

• Create Custom-calculated Forecast Columns to Reflect Your Business
  Tailor forecasts to meet your business needs using up to five custom calculated columns per forecast type. You can show, hide, and reorder most standard and custom columns on the forecasts page.
• Choose Custom Opportunity Fields to Include or Exclude from Your Forecasts
  With an improved user experience, sales teams can filter by custom number, currency, and picklist fields for forecasts to pinpoint the data to study. 
• View Territory-based Forecast Types in the Salesforce Mobile App
  View and use forecast types in the Salesforce mobile app that are grouped by territory hierarchy. For example, you can forecast opportunity revenue by territory. 
• Create Longer Forecast Adjustment Notes
  Enter up to 255 characters in your forecast adjustment notes to provide more details on who adjusted the forecast and why. 
• Work Smoothly with Improved Usability of Salesforce Desktop Site Forecasts
  Sales reps and other forecast users can benefit from improved visualization and navigation on the forecasts page with quota attainment percentages shown as progress bars in the summary view, see more info regarding an adjusted forecast value in a single pop up, keep your time frame as a point of reference where the time period column is frozen as you scroll horizontally in summary view.

#7–Estimated Wait Time for Customers

Route work faster to improve the customer experience by providing the estimated wait time for customers. This feature provides tangible clarity to the user and allows them to make the choice of willingly remaining on the phone for service or potentially pivoting to a text or email correspondence. Learn more.

#8–Sales Cloud for Slack

This update brings even more efficiency to orgs using Sales Cloud and Slack. Allow your sales team to collaborate on the fly through the app to see, update, and share their accounts, contacts, leads, and opportunities in the sales pipeline. Learn more.

Get Ready

There are a few things you can do to make sure you’re ready for this upcoming release. Make sure you know the timing of your production instance and sandbox upgrade for the Winter ‘23 release. It’s important to know that to take advantage of the first opportunity to test your system–and main use cases–on the new release. Most sandboxes were upgraded by August 26 of this year, and the release date for Winter ‘23 will depend on your instance. The main release weekends are: 

• September 9, 2022
• October 7, 2022
• October 14, 2022

If you know the instance your production org is located on, click your instance name at Salesforce Trust then click on Maintenance to see the Winter ‘23 release date for your org. 

You can read through all of the Salesforce Winter ‘23 release notes here (it’s a robust list), and we encourage everyone–admins and users–to become a part of the Release Readiness Trailblazer group. This is one of the best ways to stay up to date on all of the latest Salesforce innovations to discuss release information for all Salesforce Clouds, ask questions, and share struggles and wins within this great community. Head over to the Trailhead and become a part of the conversation. 

And finally, if you want a quick peek of all the Product Family/Product, Enablement Status, and brief notes to see how the Salesforce Winter ‘23 Release will integrate into your user experience, check out the Release Matrix spreadsheet. 

Okay, you’re ready to roam. Have fun!

Let Us Help

Bitwise Industries specializes in custom software development, Salesforce implementation and administration, and Contact Center-as-a-Service support. Our technology professionals have deep experience applying cutting-edge technology solutions to help entities of all sizes navigate the technology landscape to find solutions to optimize their operations.

This post was written by Jeff Rickels, Technical Writer for Bitwise Industries. When he’s not writing, he’s wondering what the best flossing schedule is for good dental hygiene. His current practice is always after popcorn and broccoli (not consumed together).