New Salesforce Login Option: Use Your Email Address Instead of Username

Logging into Salesforce is one of those tasks that both Salesforce professionals and users alike perform every single day. While users are primarily looking to access production instances, professionals who either configure or customize Salesforce surely have quite a few environments they log into, with just as many different usernames to remember or store. 

In this post, we’ll explore the new option to log in using the email address and password combination, rather than the Salesforce username.  

Username vs. Email Address 

As Salesforce professionals, usernames are probably one of the first things you learned when you started with Salesforce – one user has an email address and a username in the format of an email address.

While the email address can be reused across numerous users and environments, the username has to be unique across all Salesforce orgs. Ever encountered the frustrating “username has to be unique” error when creating a new user and had to change it?

Chances are that while you probably know your email address by heart, there are times when the usernames are not as easy to remember, especially for the free developer editions with randomly generated ones. This is exactly where the new option introduced by Salesforce comes into play! 

Use Your Email For Login

Tired of remembering numerous usernames? Salesforce has introduced a simplified login option! On the familiar login.salesforce.com page, you’ll now find the Log In with Email feature. 

This new option allows you to access your Salesforce account using just your email address. Salesforce has made it not only easy to adopt, but readily available for anyone logging into a Salesforce org to use if they want to. 

With the new login option, if your email address is linked to only one Salesforce account, you’ll be taken directly to the password prompt, and then you can log in. Note that you can also reset your password using just the email address instead of the username. 

Environment Switcher

Alongside this new feature is the Environment Switcher dashboard – a great new tool for Salesforce professionals who use multiple production orgs or developer editions. Once again, there is nothing to enable or set up – the screen will simply appear when entering your email address associated with multiple Salesforce orgs once you’ve entered the verification code.

Within the Environment switcher, you will see all the Salesforce orgs associated with your email address, and their corresponding usernames, type, and URLs. You can also easily search through them and rename the cards as needed to easily organize and find the ones you need next time. 

Considerations 

• You will need access to the email address used in order to retrieve the verification code prior to using the new login using the email address feature if the same address is connected to multiple environments. If you don’t have access to the inbox, continue using the username instead. 
• The verification code is valid for 30 days for desktop. However, you will be prompted to verify every time when logging in on mobile. 
• If your org(s) use single sign-on (SSO), you will be redirected to your identity provider as usual to complete the process.
• Sandboxes and Scratch Orgs do not appear in the Environment Switcher as of now. 
• After logging in using the email address at least once, previous email addresses you used will be displayed for you to choose when returning, or you can choose to use a different login. 
• Email addresses can be removed from the list individually if needed. 

Final Thoughts

With this new option, gone will be the days when you have to remember unique usernames or peruse through saved credentials to identify the correct one for the org, especially when it comes to multiple customer environments or even Salesforce developer editions. 

The ability to log in with the email address to any of the connected environments is not only a time saver when it comes to accessing the orgs, but also an easy way to keep track of all Salesforce instances your email is connected to.

Have you already tried logging in using your email address instead of the username? Let us know in the comments below!