True to the Core sessions have been a Salesforce staple of Salesforce events for a long time. It gives attendees a space to highlight issues and product gaps while sharing their thoughts and potential concerns about the overall direction of certain functionalities or products. Given the opportunity to ask Salesforce product teams anything, the Trailblazer DX participants inquired about various items, ranging from features directly impacting their day-to-day tasks to what’s next for Salesforce.
The full session is available on demand on Salesforce+ to watch the entire Q&A, but let’s dive into some of the topics raised and their impact on the Salesforce professionals working in the ecosystem.
Key Highlights From True to the Core
Salesforce co-founder and CTO Parker Harris led the live Q&A feedback session alongside other product leaders, sharing insights into their roadmap and how they could be shaped moving forward.
More Transparency Around Consumption Costs
Maximizing the business value of Agentforce and Data Cloud implementations is a high priority for Salesforce customers who either tried these out with Salesforce Foundations or already made a purchasing decision, and the cost-benefit analysis cannot be understated.
The new consumption-based pricing model raises the need for Salesforce customers to always be aware of the consumption and cost associated with each business scenario these products are used for.
Salesforce plans to continue the journey they started with Digital Wallet and consumption cards, giving more information and insights to their customers, which can be directly associated with the ROI.
The Spring ‘25 release has introduced Consumption Alerts as an initial measure to enhance monitoring capabilities. This improvement follows the implementation of consumption cards, which provide greater visibility into usage.
For example, since both sandbox and production generative AI usage incurs Einstein Requests consumption, using these features is paramount for optimization.
Well-Architected
Architects at True to the Core cited the well-architected initiative that provided materials, frameworks, and implementation guidance to Salesforce professionals as an invaluable resource – despite it having recently ended.
This dedicated space that offered best practices, anti-patterns to avoid, and an entire library of various resources was noted as a huge loss for Salesforce and is sorely missed by the community.
In response, Salesforce said they would look into this program and see what they can do. While things are not yet clear, this is something to keep an eye out for!
Investing in the Community
On the topic of community initiatives, Salesforce were asked for a stronger commitment to keep supporting and investing in various community programs, such as Golden Hoodie, User Groups, Salesforce Military, the MVP program, as well as others. The point was also made that no Golden Hoodie was awarded at TDX this year, which the product leaders noted as a mistake and an oversight.
Salesforce acknowledged the feedback and reassured the audience that none of these programs are going away even if other approaches are being explored – such as the monetary award given to the winners of the Agentforce hackathon.
Access to Prompt Builder
It’s no surprise that this versatile tool and its accessibility came up during the True to the Core session, with Salesforce mentioning that they intend to make it available and that cost may have been a key reason for why it was missed in the first round of Salesforce Foundations.
Prompt Builder can combine the power of generative AI with information from your Salesforce records and even Data Cloud to produce responses that can be used across the platform, including but not limited to agent actions, for example.
Prompt Builder allows Salesforce professionals to create and test prompts directly within the user interface. They can also see how the Einstein Trust Layer protects sensitive data and view responses related to specific records – all Salesforce professionals should become familiar with this useful tool.
You can access and test Prompt Builder, Agentforce, and Data Cloud today in the brand-new developer edition.
Create Parity Between Salesforce Flow and OmniStudio
There’s no denying that OmniStudio has powerful capabilities and a suite of tools to help Salesforce professionals create intricate industry-specific experiences. But with the latest additions, Salesforce Flow is starting to catch up.
Flow Builder is getting the love it deserves, which is evident through new features such as the Transform element, which simplifies data mapping and eliminates the complexity of Loops. Also, as of Spring ‘25, the Transform element will now support joining collections.
Additional enhancements include the ability to quickly add progress indicators to Screen Flows with just a few clicks and the option to generate draft Flows using prompts.
Salesforce have said they are committed to continuing their enhancements in areas that OmniStudio is well-known for, such as styles and themes.
To find out more details about the Flow roadmap as shared by Alex Edelstein, make sure to check out his recent LinkedIn post, which is packed with details and potential timelines for new features and functionality across all areas of Flow Builder.
“Log In As” on Salesforce Mobile App
With Sales teams constantly on the move, the Salesforce mobile app can play a significant role in their productivity away from their laptops. But what about other Salesforce professionals who have to set it up and troubleshoot?
The idea to offer the same capability to log in as another user on the Salesforce mobile app as it exists on Desktop has been on IdeaExchange for over ten years, with no update in the last few years.
Hopefully, with the new enhancements that Salesforce rolled out for the sales cloud mobile experience for starters, this long overdue capability could be added to the roadmap.
Security and Access
It is already well-known that Salesforce is doubling down on making working Permission Sets and Permission Set groups more seamless and easier to manage, with many customers already migrating from Profiles to adhere to this new best practice.
At True to the Core, London-based architect Louise Lockie spotted and shared a bug where new permissions were being added to custom Profiles. Salesforce confirmed that this was not supposed to happen and that they were already actively looking into it.
It may be a good idea to check your custom profiles and ensure that your users are still only able to access the apps and functionality they are supposed to.
Another aspect brought up during the session was the lack of granularity when it comes to permissions, as Modify All Data, Manage Users, or Customize Application are still needed in order to grant certain access to users.
These “super permissions” are keeping Salesforce customers from truly operating by the principle of least privilege for certain personas, and in some cases, admins may either have to take additional tasks to maintain the limited access or grant one of these permissions to users, which of course is not a good idea and should not be a decision taken lightly.
While it is unclear when this enhancement will be prioritized, it was acknowledged as a hard problem to solve.
Einstein Activity Capture
Many Salesforce customers using Einstein Activity Capture (EAC) have probably hit some roadblocks in the processes, reporting, and automations they wanted to achieve as EAC data is still stored in AWS and not on the platform. This was also heavily discussed during the session.
Salesforce confirmed that following the migration to Hyperforce being completed, using Data Cloud instead may be on the table and on the roadmap. This may also be combined with a rebuild of the product in light of new business needs.
Certifications
There are numerous certifications available for Salesforce Professionals, ranging from the well-known Administrator and Platform App Builder to more recent ones such as Agentforce Specialist.
There have been updates made to some existing certifications, but the Architect-specific ones have stayed unchanged since Agentforce was announced. At the moment, it seems that they will continue to remain as such.
While there isn’t any specific Agentforce Architect certification in plan right now, nor any updates for existing Architect certifications, Salesforce did mention discussions about introducing new Agentforce Consultant certs in the future.
Until then, the recommendation is to explore the Agentforce Specialist certification (which has just been renamed from AI Specialist and updated with questions to reflect the new products and skills), as well as the new Agentblazer program on Trailhead.
Summary
As always, a wide range of topics were covered in the questions asked by Salesforce professionals, and while some of them may already be Salesforce’s roadmap or work in progress, others will have to wait and see what’s next.
To hear all questions and answers directly from the community and Salesforce leadership, make sure to watch the True to the Core session from Trailblazer DX in its entirety on Salesforce+.
