Salesforce New Release Preview
Understanding the intricacies of Salesforce's New Release Preview process must be done if you are regularly shipping configuration components to a Production org (by opposition to a one-off configuration). Leave no room for luck as you are potentially playing with major risks...
There are two types of sandbox instances, one in sync with the current version, production like (non-preview instance) and another one published a few weeks before an upgrade and showing off the future features (preview instance). Sandbox preview instances only exist to anticipate the changes going to happen to the Production org in a few weeks.
The Risks
Can upgrading break things? In the theory of SaaS, no. The vendor owns the infrastructure, the declarative configuration is protected, tested by the vendor and your customer's code is obeying rules established by the vendor. But, in practice, there are two risks to anticipate:
Salesforce is trying to help and anticipate all upgrade issues by running a Hammer Test in ALL orgs ("The SaaS Advantage") before an upgrade. It is also working with major AppExchange ISV vendors to anticipate the most important changes in the pipeline.
Feature Impact
Future version compatibility issues or not it's always good practice to know what innovation will Salesforce deliver in the next release. There are many reasons for this, the first one being to make the most of what you are paying for. So, it's always good to have one or several sandboxes available to test outside of the current solution. The other reason is to take care of what Salesforce calls "Feature Impact". Some features require you to enable or configure them before users can get the benefits. Some others are automatically enabled for your users. The latter can become a source of problems, although, in theory, and as already mentioned, it should not.
So, you should be fine but it's a good practice to test before Salesforce flicks the switch to the new version: use Preview instances for that purpose.
The Way To Do It
Split the delivery into two concerns:
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As one of my colleagues says...
There is no Preview/Non-Preview switch on the UI when you refresh a sandbox.
You are not expected to "press a special button (Preview/Non-Preview)" but to "press the usual button (Spin/Refresh) at a certain time". And this is what you need to understand...
Conclusion
So, to summarise, depending on what you are trying to build, don't let luck dictate the sort of org you are putting together. Spin it but spin it at the right time, knowing what you're going to get.
Resources
Posts
I leave you with a bunch of resources all issued by Salesforce themselves.
Ask to Uncover? Question Workshop | Helping Tech Teams & Consultants Deliver the Right Solution Through Better Questions | Corporate Trainer & Speaker | Author of Amazon Bestseller, 'Rock Your Role as a Salesforce Admin'
2 年Great article! As Salesforce has grown more complex, including having been around long enough that certain features or API versions have “aged out,”?my experience is that the seasonal releases require much more analysis and testing to uncover potential impacts. And, great advice about splitting delivery into two concerns!?Many a Salesforce team has been stymied by validation errors trying to promote to production from a preview instance.?Or, they learned the hard way that a deploy date would have to push because the cool solution they built in sandbox was using new features that aren’t yet available.
Co-Founder and Partner at Levitate Consulting, Enterprise Architect | Leveraging IT and Trends to Transform Businesses
2 年Insightful Article. Thanks for sharing Fabrice.
Salesforce ISV Technical Architect | Agentforce |Viewer - Docs Generator | UG Leader
2 年Thank you for sharing Fabrice Cathala ??
Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame | CEO & Founder | Architect | Digital Transformation | Serial Entrepreneur
2 年Great article Fabrice !! Well thought out
Sup
2 年Catching up myself on new features Helpful Fabrice