With every release, Salesforce continues to deliver new features and meaningful enhancements. As a Salesforce Administrator, staying on top of these changes is a significant part of the job, not only to keep your organization running smoothly but also to ensure it evolves with the platform. And while much of this work occurs behind the scenes, many of these updates also unlock real, tangible productivity gains for your users.
In 2026, the focus is firmly on working smarter with what you already have. Salesforce is doubling down on optimization, reuse, and scalability, helping admins get more value from their existing orgs rather than constantly building from scratch. In this article, I’ve pulled together my top five features every Salesforce Admin should be paying attention to in 2026 to stay ahead of the curve and bring their admin A-game.
1. Flow Approvals
Salesforce’s new Approval Orchestration flow types are one of the most meaningful Flow updates we’ve seen in a while. Introduced in Spring ’25 and expanded in later releases, they finally bring approvals fully into Flow Builder, giving you far more flexibility than legacy Approval Processes ever allowed.
These new flow types can handle everything from simple, internal approvals to more complex scenarios involving external users or systems, and the best part is they don’t consume automation credits or require additional licenses.
The Flow Approval Orchestration sees the introduction of new flow types:
- Autolaunched Approval Orchestration (No Trigger): This type can be triggered from other processes or even custom buttons.
- Record-triggered Approval Orchestration: This will be triggered based on the record to be sent for approval being created or updated.
At a high level, approval orchestrations are built using stages and steps, which makes even complex approval paths much easier to read, manage, and evolve. You can mix interactive approval steps with background automation, control how and when stages complete, add recall paths, and handle errors directly within the orchestration.
New tooling like the Approvals Lightning App, the Orchestration Work Guide, and improved debugging support make it much easier for both admins and approvers to see what’s happening and take action without jumping through hoops.
Overall, this feels like a clear signal from Salesforce that Flow is now the home for approvals.
2. Account Plans
Account Plans give sales teams a structured way to plan for growth. This feature is particularly effective for teams that want to move from reactive selling to strategic account development.
You can view opportunity details, build a SWOT analysis, capture customer needs, and document market dynamics. You can also set measurable objectives and use relationship maps to visualize key stakeholders. Everything lives in one place and supports long-term account success.
Sales Account Research is the latest part of Salesforce Account Plans, a way to manage account strategy, related goals, and stakeholder involvement directly in Salesforce.
Sales Account Research is a generative AI-powered feature designed to help sales teams gather external company insights, initiating the research directly from an account or account plan record within Salesforce. Instead of hunting for information elsewhere, Salesforce brings relevant research to you and presents it in a structured, usable way.
Out of the box, it can generate insights such as an overview of the company, competitive strengths and weaknesses, industry trends, key performance indicators, strategic priorities, and main competitors.
The research is sourced from the web, expanded into readable summaries, and includes citations so users can see where the information came from. Once generated, the content can be reviewed, edited, rewritten to match your tone, and selectively saved back to fields on the account or account plan.
3. Sub Flows
Before I sat down to write this article, I asked the rest of the brilliant technical content creators at SF Ben what they thought would be the most important features to pay attention to in 2026. My colleague, Mariel Domingo, pointed to sub-flows.
They’re not new, and they’re definitely not the shiniest feature on the list (yes, Account Plans, I’m talking about you). But during her 90-day Flow learning journey in 2025, Mariel found that really understanding sub-flows was critical. They turned out to be one of those foundational features that quietly unlock better, cleaner, and more scalable automation.
Sub-flows are one of those Salesforce features that quietly make an admin’s life much easier once you start using them. At their core, sub-flows let you create reusable blocks of automation that can be called from other flows. Instead of rebuilding the same logic again and again, you build it once and invoke it from a parent flow whenever it’s needed. A common example is address validation.
If multiple processes need to check or standardize an address, a single sub-flow can handle that work for all of them.
While “sub-flow” isn’t a separate flow type, it changes how you think about both Autolaunched Flows and Screen Flows. Any existing flow can become a sub-flow as long as it’s designed with input and output variables. The parent flow passes information in, the sub-flow runs its logic or actions, and then returns a result.
This is especially useful for complex calculations or multi-step actions you want to reuse elsewhere, such as logging errors by emailing admins, posting to Chatter, and sending data off-platform.
Why are sub-flows so important? They make automation easier to maintain, faster to build, and far less error-prone. Updating logic in one place instead of five reduces testing time and minimizes the risk of inconsistencies.
Just remember that sub-flows run in the same transaction as the parent flow, so governor limits apply across both.
4. Health Check
Salesforce security issues aren’t going away anytime soon. Last year alone, we saw far too many security breaches that could have been prevented. Keeping your Salesforce org secure should always be top of mind, but let’s be honest, the day-to-day grind often pushes proactive security down the to-do list.
That’s where the Spring ’26 updates to Salesforce Health Check come in. Alongside improvements like MFA status tracking, SAML enablement, and session management controls, there’s a new feature that makes it easier to stay on top of your org’s security posture: automated email notifications when Health Check detects a change.
Here’s how to set it up: from Setup, type Health Check in the Quick Find box and select it. Toggle on Notify all System Admins to alert anyone with a System Administrator profile. Or, if you prefer, use the Recipients lookup to add individual users, or even external email addresses.
Now, you don’t have to wait to stumble on a security issue; your team will know right away.
5. Error Console
Errors happen. Some are loud and obvious; you can’t miss them. Others are quiet, sneaky, and easy to forget. Salesforce calls these non-fatal errors. They don’t stop a process, and users often keep working without noticing, but they can still cause problems behind the scenes.
Think of it like this: a fatal error is like your car engine dying in the middle of the highway. You’re stuck until it’s fixed. A non-fatal error is more like a dashboard light flickering on. Your car keeps moving, but something’s not quite right, and if you ignore it, it could turn into a bigger problem.
Spring ’26 introduced the Error Console, a central place to see and manage page-level errors in Lightning Experience. No more hunting through scattered logs or ignoring silent issues. Now, all errors, both fatal and non-fatal, are surfaced in one place, making it easier to spot recurring problems, figure out where they’re happening, and fix them before your users start reporting broken pages or weird behavior.
To enable this, go to Setup → User Interface and tick the box for “Use Error Console for reporting in Lightning Experience”.
Summary
With every release, Salesforce continues to evolve, giving admins new tools to work smarter and get more value from their orgs. Staying up to date with these changes isn’t just about knowing what’s new; it’s about applying best practices, reducing technical debt, and making sure your Salesforce investment is working as hard as possible.
Are there any other must-know features Salesforce Admins should have on their radar? Share your favorites in the comments and keep the conversation going.
If you’re keen to keep up to date on the latest and greatest features for Salesforce Admins, check out The Best Salesforce Features Released in 2025 here.
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