The Salesforce Summer ‘23 release is just around the corner, and the release notes have arrived as an early gift. This release is packed with plenty of great new features.
You can find everything you need to know about how to prepare and when your instance will get upgraded here. For now, let’s dive into the most exciting features and updates for developers of the Salesforce Summer ‘23 release.
1. Quickly Create Full Sandboxes (GA)
This has been in beta for a while, but as of Summer ‘23, the ability to quickly create full Sandboxes is generally available for eligible Hyperforce instances. The Quick Create technology enhances the speed at which full Sandboxes are created or refreshed, allowing teams to focus more time on developing and testing solutions, and less time waiting for Sandboxes to be built.
2. Deploy Scalable Apps and Analyze System Performance with Scale Center
Scale Center provides self-service and near-real-time access to performance metrics. You can diagnose root causes and act on scale issues earlier in your development cycle, along with improving the scalability of your Salesforce implementation. You can identify issues with performance or scale, launch analyses to troubleshoot errors, and retrieve customized insights and recommendations.
To enable Scale Center in Sandboxes and in production on first-party infrastructure (1P) and Hyperforce, from Setup, enter Scale Center, and then select Scale Center. To get access, contact your program architect or account executive.
3. Implement Iterable on Set in Apex
The set class now implements the iterable interface, so you can directly iterate over sets. Both sets and lists are iterable, allowing for more code reuse. This is a really exciting change and something that has been requested on the Idea Exchange since 2014.
The following is an example using the String.join method with a set, which was previously unsupported because set didn’t implement iterable.
Set<String> letters = new Set<String>{'a','b','c','d'};
System.debug(String.join(letters, '...'));
4. Opt-In for Event Log File Generation
Previously, all instances received eligible event log files automatically. This update adds a new preference setting in the Event Monitoring Settings page where you select whether or not to generate and receive event log files.
5. Async SOQL Retirement
Async SOQL is a method for running SOQL queries when you can’t wait for immediate results. These queries are run in the background over Salesforce big object data. Async SOQL provides a convenient way to query large amounts of data stored in Salesforce. It is implemented as a RESTful API that enables you to run queries in the familiar syntax of SOQL. Because of its asynchronous operation, you can subset, join, and create more complex queries and not be subject to timeout limits. This feature is being retired in the Summer ‘23 release.
If you are using Async SOQL queries, you will need to replace them with bulk API and batch Apex.
6. You Can No Longer Create New Process Builders
As per the timeline, and just like with workflow rules, you can no longer create new Process Builders. Interestingly, unlike with workflow rules, you cannot clone an existing Process Builder as a new process. You can still activate, deactivate, and edit your existing Process Builder processes, and continue to create automations in Flow Builder.
7. REST URIs No Longer Accept File Extensions
There has been a behavior change to REST URIs. JSON and XML can no longer be appended directly to REST URIs to specify content type. Although API versions 57.0 and earlier still support this functionality, transition away from this syntax before these versions aren’t available. Instead, to specify the content type to return for REST requests, use the HTTP ACCEPT header.
8. Metadata API Changes
There have been a number of changes to the Metadata API in this release. From the retirement of the ServiceFieldDataType metadata type to the various new analytics and customization features, there really are lots of exciting enhancements coming in Summer ‘23.
My personal favorite is the ability to use the new permissionSetGroups field on the existing DelegateGroup metadata type, allowing delegated admins to manage permission set group assignments. A close second is the new userAccessPoliciesEnabled field on the existing UserManagementSettings metadata type, giving the ability to enable User Access Policies (beta).
9. New and Changed Lightning Web Components
In the Summer ‘23 release there are a few changes to Lightning Web Components. The lightning-card and lightning-tree-grid components have new attributes, the lightning-icon component has some changes to meet WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards, and the heading tags for some components now have an aria-level attribute which can be used to differentiate heading levels for ARIA-compliant screen readers.
10. Transfer Package Ownership to a Different Dev Hub (GA)
As of Summer ‘23, this feature is now generally available, giving the ability to transfer ownership of an unlocked package or second-generation managed package from one Dev Hub org to another. A transfer can occur internally between two Dev Hub orgs that you own, or you can transfer a package externally to another Salesforce customer, Salesforce Partner, or ISV. This change provides a way to sell an unlocked or second-generation managed package.
To initiate a package transfer, you need to log a case with either Salesforce Partner Support or Salesforce Customer Support, due to the complex nature of this procedure.
Summary
That’s it for our rundown of the best Salesforce Summer ‘23 release features for developers. What other new features have you spotted? Let us know in the comments!
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