Key takeaways from the Salesforce Winter '25 release webinar

Have you caught up on the latest features from the Winter '25 release of Salesforce yet? In October 2024, Credera's Chief Technology Officer and Salesforce MVP Keir Bowden presented the Salesforce Winter '25 Release Webinar, offering a comprehensive overview of the latest updates and features. From new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to vital platform enhancements, here’s a recap of some of the key takeaways you won't want to miss.

Introducing Agentforce: Your new AI assistant

Salesforce is rolling out Agentforce, a tool that will help you build customizable, autonomous AI agents (similar to a chatbot) for a variety of business tasks. These agents, such as the Service Development Representative, can assist customers using their knowledge base, and unlike traditional chatbots, are well-equipped to handle unexpected questions. 

The AI assistant, now renamed Agentforce, is a replacement for Einstein Copilot. This new and improved assistant not only retrieves information from your database but also takes action based on an enhanced reasoning engine and organized topics. Its goal is to boost productivity by learning and reasoning over time. 

Features being retired in the Winter '25 release 

As with any release, some features are expected to be retired. Some of the most important ‘fond farewells’ include: 

• Marketing consent component: Replaced by the privacy consent status component in the Winter ‘25 release. 

• Salesforce Functions: Retiring at the end of January 2025. 

• Einstein automated contacts: Retiring in February 2025; users are advised to switch to automatic contact creation. 

• Close date predictions: Retiring in Spring '25; switch to Einstein opportunity scoring instead. 

• Legacy chat: Set to retire on Valentine's Day 2026. 

• Salesforce for Outlook: Retirement delayed until December 2027. 

General Salesforce update highlights 

• Login-based licensing: A new login-based licensing model for internal users will launch on Oct. 15, 2024. This model charges based on the number of logins per day/month rather than a per-user license fee, offering a more flexible and potentially cost-effective solution for organizations with large user bases and infrequent/occasional access. 

• Einstein search query limits: Einstein search queries now have limits: 3,000 queries or 200,000 CPU milliseconds per user within a five-minute window. Exceeding these limits will generate error messages. 

• Introducing a new setup domain: A new setup domain, *.salesforce-setup.com, is being introduced. Make sure to add it to your allow lists to avoid disruptions. 

Analytics enhancements: Better insights into your data 

• Einstein report formula generation: Einstein now assists in creating row-level and summary formulas using natural language processing, making it easier to generate complex reports. 

• CRM Analytics updates: Key updates include the ability to download directly from dashboard widget action menus, mark downloaded items as confidential, and new query filter operators. You can also launch flows directly from CRM Analytics. 

Development updates: Boosting coding efficiency 

• Agentforce for developers: Agentforce for developers offers a free suite of tools to enhance coding efficiency, including code generation, explanations, and test case creation. 

• Apex: There's now a free tier of event monitoring available, allowing you to track unhandled Apex exceptions. You'll get the Apex unexpected exception event type, that includes @AuraEnabled and @InvocableActon methods. 

• Error messages: SOQL error messages have been updated to be more informative. This is a potentially breaking change if your code relies on specific text in these messages for exception handling, as the previous messages may no longer be available. 

• Flow Builder features: Among other changes, a new errors and warnings pane is now on the right side of your screen. It explains why your flow can’t be activated and links to the problem component for easy fixes. Plus, it highlights issues that could slow down your flows or exceed limits, giving you tips to improve performance. 

• Enhanced security measures: Forced login, which allowed usernames and passwords in URL queries, is now permanently disabled for better security. You can also revoke JWT access tokens for individual users. Outbound HTTPS callouts now support TLS 1.3, the latest version. Starting October 4, new Hyperforce orgs will use the Salesforce Edge Network, directing requests to the nearest Salesforce location for improved performance. 

Experience Cloud updates: New styling and customization options 

• Lighting Web Runtime (LWR): The styling options for LWR have improved. You can now customize more elements in the theme panel, including buttons and headings, and anchor the header to the top of the page. You can also use human-readable information in account and contact URLs instead of record IDs, making them more SEO-friendly. The navigation menu for LWR sites has become highly customizable too, allowing adjustments to colors, border spacing, text styles, and accent lines for a more polished look. 

Marketing updates: Improving customer engagement 

• Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (MCAE) features: MCAE now features a new duplicate prospect identification tool in Optimizer and the ability to copy forms and emails to a content management system. Additionally, system email links now open in the Lightning app instead of automatically redirecting to Classic Pardot. 

• Marketing Cloud Growth: For more relevant messaging, you can personalize emails with dynamically generated content campaigns triggered by individual actions, such as product purchases or white paper downloads. There’s also a new preference page for SMS messaging and improved lead and contact scoring rules. If you use Einstein to generate content, you can now define the brand identity for more consistent output. 

Sales Cloud and Service Cloud updates 

• Sales Cloud: The new account plans feature, inspired by ideas from AppExchange, provides detailed opportunity insights. You can create strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analyses, capture market needs and dynamics, and set clear measurable objectives. Additionally, you can visualize key stakeholders with a map or tree view.  

• Service Cloud: Service Cloud now supports third-party messaging apps in conversation mining. Customized work summaries in Copilot are generally available, allowing you to create your own or use standard entries. Additionally, with Service Email Assistants, you can use case data to generate personalized emails using standard or custom prompt templates. 

The bottom line

The Salesforce Winter '25 release brings a wealth of new features and enhancements designed to boost productivity, improve user experience, and ensure better security and compliance.  While we've highlighted some key updates, there are many more changes not covered in this blog post. For a comprehensive overview, be sure to check the full release notes on Salesforce's release homepage or access the full video recording of the webinar on our YouTube channel. 

Our proprietary generative AI tool, CrederaGPT, was used in the creation of this article (ideation, organization, summarization, or refinement).

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