Kris’s Picks: Salesforce Winter ‘25 Edition

Welcome to the latest Salesforce release! Kris Hollen, our Technical Director at Sertus, has curated the most impactful features from the Winter ’25 Release. These selected updates are designed to enhance your productivity, streamline operations, and create new opportunities for growth.

Highlights include:

Einstein AI enhancements for nonprofit organizations
Advanced storage management and archiving tools
Strengthened email security measures

We’ve organized these features based on their ease of implementation to help you plan your adoption strategy effectively. While the full release notes are available here, this brief focuses on updates we believe will most benefit your organization.

We encourage you to review this document carefully to maximize the value of these new capabilities. The Sertus team is ready to support you in leveraging these enhancements for your organization’s needs.

Important Considerations

Some of the features highlighted below specific to Data Cloud, Analytics, and Einstein may be limited to organizations already utilizing these capabilities or may require additional purchases.

Release Timeline

The Salesforce Winter ’25 release will be rolled out on September 6, October 4, or October 12, 2024, depending on your Salesforce instance.
Most features will be automatically enabled with the release.
Our team will work with you to develop a tailored action plan for evaluating, implementing, and enhancing your Salesforce org based on the Winter ’25 release items.

AUTOMATICALLY ENABLED OR EASY TO TURN ON

MFA Is On by Default for Direct Logins to Production Orgs

To strengthen the security of your Salesforce account, multi-factor authentication (MFA) will now be a default feature for all new production orgs when they go live. This means when users log in to a newly created production org, they will need to complete the MFA process as an extra security step. This update will not affect your existing sandbox orgs or those currently in a trial period. However, once a trial org is converted to a paid subscription, MFA will become a standard part of the login process.

REQUIRES SOME CONFIGURATION OR SETUP

Create and Verify Your Default No-Reply Organization-Wide Email Address to Send Email

To comply with increased email security standards, orgs are required to create and verify a Default No-reply address in Organization-Wide Email Address settings.

Example: When sending automated emails like password resets or system notifications, Salesforce will use this verified no-reply address, enhancing email deliverability and security.

The “So What?: This change ensures your organization’s emails are more likely to be delivered and trusted by recipients, reducing the risk of important communications being marked as spam.

Verify Your Return Email Address for Sender Verification

After Spring ’25, to comply with increased email security standards, you’re required to verify the Email Address in My Email Settings.

Example: When a staff member sends an email through Salesforce, the system will use their verified email address, improving the authenticity of the communication.

The “So What?”: This verification process helps maintain your organization’s email reputation, increases email deliverability, and provides an additional layer of security against email spoofing.

Save on Storage and Boost Performance with Salesforce Archive (Pilot)

Optimize for speed and efficiency as your business data grows. Archive expired or unused records in an external, low-cost data store. Visualize the records in your data store directly from your Salesforce org. Automate data cleanup with recurring archive jobs.

Example: An organization can archive closed grant applications from previous years, freeing up storage space while still maintaining access to historical data when needed.

The “So What?”: Salesforce Archive is your native solution to unchecked data bloat, a time and cost saver for your data-dominant business. It allows you to maintain optimal system performance without losing access to valuable historical data.

Get Flexible Access to Custom Apps with the Salesforce Platform Login License

The Salesforce Platform Login license allows you to assign access to custom apps built on Platform for internal users without the requirement to buy a seat-based license. With the Salesforce Platform Login license, you can pay per daily unique login for users who need infrequent or occasional access.

Example: A large organization with numerous volunteers who need occasional access to a custom volunteer management app can use this license type to provide access without the cost of full-time user licenses.

The “So What?”: This licensing model offers significant cost savings and flexibility for organizations with users who need intermittent access to specific custom applications, allowing for more efficient resource allocation.

MAY REQUIRE SIGNIFICANT INVESTMENT BUT WORTH A REVIEW

Einstein Platform

The Einstein Platform enables you to build intelligent solutions that address your specific business challenges using generative AI, predictive AI, and other AI tools. Generative AI can help you create content, such as product descriptions or customer responses, saving your team time and effort. Predictive AI enables you to make data-driven decisions by providing insights into customer behavior, sales forecasts, and more. Salesforce continually improves the functionality, security, and performance of AI features, ensuring that you have access to the latest advancements in artificial intelligence technology.

Example: A marketing team can use Einstein’s predictive AI to identify which donor leads are most likely to convert, allowing them to focus their efforts on the most promising opportunities and improve their overall conversion rates.

The “So What?”: By incorporating AI-powered solutions into your workflows, you can automate repetitive tasks, make more informed decisions, and provide better experiences for your customers.

Einstein Generative AI for Nonprofit Cloud

Einstein AI for Nonprofit Cloud introduces four beta features:

A program and benefits summarizer
A notes summary tool
A grant application summarizer for board reviews
A funding award summary generator

These AI-powered tools aim to streamline nonprofit operations by automatically creating concise summaries from various data sources.

Example: A program manager at a nonprofit, uses Einstein Generative AI to prepare for a board meeting. They can quickly generate summaries of a tree planting program, recent team meeting notes, a new grant application, and a current funding award, saving hours of manual preparation time.

The “So What?”: Einstein Generative AI streamlines the process of summarizing crucial information, allowing you to complete tasks and make strategic decisions more quickly and efficiently. This can lead to better-informed decision-making and more effective communication with stakeholders.

ADMIN FOCUSED ENHANCEMENTS

In addition to the main features highlighted above, the Winter ‘25 Release also includes several enhancements that will be particularly useful for Salesforce admins. These updates focus on improving the customization and management of your Salesforce org, making it easier for you to create a tailored and efficient experience for your users.

Lightning Reports & Dashboards: Build report formulas with Einstein’s assistance, allowing admins to create complex reports more quickly and with fewer errors, such as multi-level donation rollups or volunteer hour calculations.

Permissions: Use the enhanced User Access Summary and new Object Access Summary to efficiently manage and audit user permissions across multiple objects and profiles, ensuring proper data access and security compliance.

Lightning App Builder: Create Dynamic Highlights Panels to display key record fields in a single responsive view, enabling admins to design more intuitive layouts that prominently showcase critical information like donation amounts or program outcomes.

Sharing: Manage public group members faster and add group descriptions, making it easier for admins to organize and maintain groups like “Major Donors” or “Active Volunteers” for targeted communications and data access. Additionally, specify multiple picklist values in the record criteria of restriction rules and scoping rules, allowing for more granular control over data access.

General Setup: Streamline user management with improvements to the User Access Summary page, allowing admins to quickly review and adjust a user’s access rights across multiple objects and apps in a single view.

Mobile Experience: Enhance mobile productivity by simultaneously enabling Dynamic Highlights Panel and Dynamic Forms for mobile users. This allows field staff and volunteers to access key information and interact with records more efficiently on their mobile devices.

RETIRING FEATURES

Elevate Retirement
Salesforce is retiring the Elevate family of products. This will include Elevate Advanced Edition, Elevate Power of Us Editions, and all add-ons. This product will be deactivated on or after October 1, 2024.

foundationConnect Retirement
Salesforce is retiring foundationConnect. The ability to renew subscriptions as part of foundationConnect will end on January 31, 2025, and the product will be deactivated on January 31, 2026

BE INSPIRED BY YOUR DATA

Are you looking for a partner to build efficient, secure, integrated and thoughtfully designed Salesforce and Tableau platforms for your non-profit organization, philanthropic organization, or small business? We serve as your advocates, expert advisors, and partners in your data journey. The outcome of our collaboration is a data-driven organization that is primed for growth – and a team that feels ease, confidence, and clarity in using data to achieve its goals. Ready to be inspired by your data? Book a meeting with us today!