Salesforce Winter '22 Release Highlights
Our 9 Fave Features You Need to Know About
The Winter ’22 release is nearly here, and as usual there are a ton of great new things to unpack. We’ve highlighted what we feel are some of the most exciting changes headed your way. Read on for the details…
Flow Updates
The sheer amount of Flow updates for Winter ’22 has us excited! Here are the top four we’re looking forward to the most.
1. Send Outbound Messages with Flow
Outbound messages are now available as an action in the Flow Builder. Why is this so great? Now you can do more within Flow instead of having to use antiquated Workflow Rules!
2. Record-Triggered Flow Start Element Updates
Setting up the Record-Triggered Flow Start Element used to require multiple steps. Now these steps have been combined into one with some additional enhancements included.
In addition to the ‘Object’ and ‘Trigger’ sections now being on one single page, you can also now optimize the Flow for a specific action set:
- Fast Field Updates
- a Flow designed to run before the record is saved
- only updates fields on the record that triggered the flow
- Actions & Related Records
- Runs after the record has been inserted
- Designed to make updates or perform actions related directly to the record
- Does not make changes to the record itself
3. Call a Subflow from a Record-Triggered Flow
Record-Triggered Flows can now call Subflows. Now you can allow complex logic to be reused across multiple Record-Triggered Flows, and you don’t need to rebuild them each time.
4. Reconnect Flow Elements in Auto-Layout
One glaring issue many have encountered with Auto-Layout Flows is that, if a small modification is required to a path, you might need to switch off Auto-Layout, make the edit, and then switch Auto-Layout back on. With Winter ’22, you’ll now have the ability to reconnect elements throughout a Flow without the headache.
Our Top 5 Non-Flow Updates
Flow updates aren’t the only thing to be excited about for the Winter ’22 release! Here are the top 5 non-Flow changes that caught our eye.
1. Dynamic Interactions
Dynamic Interactions allow you to create Lightning Components that react dynamically to user activity on another Lightning Component. In the example below, when the user clicks on an account, the Dynamic Interactions component shows the exact location on the map.
2. Dynamic Gauge Charts in Dashboards
Prior to Winter ’22, Gauge charts only allowed you to track KPI’s against static numerical goals. Now you have the ability to build your gauge chart using metrics and field values that respond dynamically to your business.
NOTE: This feature is in BETA and is available only on the Lightning Experience in Group, Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.
3. Flow Orchestrator
Flow Orchestrator was created so that Admins can create complex multi-user, multi-step automated business processes with clicks, not code. This enables you to link different flows and approval processes together and define whether steps should be completed in order or together.
4. Inline Editing in Salesforce Reports
This was introduced in BETA in the Summer ’21 release. While not yet out of BETA, it’s worth mentioning that inline editing is now additionally supported for date, picklist, and lookup fields.
These changes are available only in Lightning Experience in Group, Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions.
5. Email Template Builder Updates
The Winter ’22 release has multiple updates to the Email Template Builder, including:
- Add rows and columns to your email templates
- The Layout component replaces the Row component
- Easily add a row to your Email Template Builder or Email Content Builder template
- Choose a layout with no columns or a preconfigured set of up to four columns
- Add column padding
- Give columns definition with padding between each column
- Evenly pad space between all columns
- Applies to Lightning Experience in Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions, and all editions of Pardot in the Pardot Lightning App
- Add indentations to email templates
- Create visual variety and organize text in your email templates
- Applies to Lightning Experience in Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions, and all editions of Pardot in the Pardot Lightning App
- Create longer subject lines
- Now 1,000 characters long (previously 230)
- Applies to Lightning Experience in Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions, and all editions of Pardot in the Pardot Lightning App
There you have it! For more information on other updates coming in the Winter ’22 release, check out the official Salesforce Winter ’22 Release Notes.
