The peak of excitement in the Salesforce ecosystem is right around the corner! Dreamforce and the Winter ’24 release coincide in the same 30-day period, and with this comes a lot of exciting news.
There are many agenda items you need to prepare for with each release, but at this stage, there are only a couple of things you need to know: 1) how to prepare your sandbox, and 2) when your instance will get upgraded.
Salesforce Winter ’24 Release Date
The first thing you should be aware of is when your production instance will be upgraded to the Salesforce Winter ’24 release. It’s important that you test all the main use cases in your org before this date to ensure that everything continues to work. Although Salesforce releases rarely have any major bugs, these checks should still be carried out.
The release date for Winter ’24 will depend on your instance of Salesforce, but the main release weekends are on:
- Sep 2, 2023
- Oct 07, 2023
- Oct 14, 2023
If you already know the instance your production org is located on, you can head over to Salesforce Trust, click on your instance name, and hit “Maintenance”. This will show you the date of the Salesforce Winter ’24 release hitting your org.
If you don’t know your instance, the quickest way to find out is to head to “company information” within “Setup” in your Salesforce. If you want to know more about Salesforce instances, check out our comprehensive post about how to find yours.
Winter ’24 Sandbox Preview Information
The second thing you should be aware of is how (and when) your sandbox is going to be upgraded. This is extremely important as this is the first opportunity you will get to test your system on the new release. You can sign up for a pre-release org, but these, of course, will not have any of your configurations.
Salesforce has two release windows for sandboxes, which depends on whether your sandbox is a “Preview” instance or a “Non-Preview” instance. Stay tuned for more information on Sandbox previews, but it looks like most sandboxes will be upgraded on Aug 26th 2023.
Check out Tim’s latest ‘treasure hunt‘ to see what Winter ’24 has in store for us.
Winter ’24 Pre-Release Org
As mentioned above, pre-release orgs are a great way to get familiar with the new release before it hits your sandboxes. For those with existing preview orgs, these are now upgraded with the Winter ’24 release, and you can login to get access to the latest features.
For those who don’t yet have a pre-release org, you can sign up for a Winter ’24 Org here.
Winter ’24 Release Notes
Although the dates mentioned above are some of the most important of the Salesforce release cycle, the most anticipated date is for the official “Salesforce Release Notes”. This is the first glimpse of the features and upgrades that are being applied across the Salesforce suite of products. Salesforce have yet to announce a date for the release notes, but they should be here in early August.
Previous release notes can be accessed here, and make sure you sign up for our newsletter to stay informed of our top release roundup posts.
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