Key takeaways from the Salesforce Winter ‘26 release webinar

Have you caught up with the latest updates in Salesforce Winter ’26? In October 2025, our guest host Keir Bowden took us through the new features, important changes, and what’s on the horizon in the regular Credera release webinar. From retiring features and major product tweaks to innovative updates, here are all the highlights you need to know.

Features retiring in Winter ’26

As ever, some features are being retired to make way for new tools and improve security. Here’s what’s heading out:

• Device Flow for Data Loader’s default connected app is now disabled following recent security incidents involving voice phishing and OAuth flows. If you use Data Loader, you will need to update your authentication approach.

• SOAP login method is no longer available in the Winter ’26 API. Earlier versions will be retired by Summer ’27, so it’s best to move your integrations to external apps and modern authentication.

• Einstein Activity Capture’s synced calendar overlay will be retired in December. Activity 360 reporting, metrics, and analytics dashboard will also retire in Summer ’26. From then on, you can store email data as task and email message records for better reporting.

• Unified Knowledge is retiring just over two years after launch. Salesforce is now encouraging users to ingest external knowledge content through Data Cloud connectors.

General Salesforce update highlights

Winter ’26 brings a range of updates across the platform. Some of the key updates include:

• A new setup domain (salesforce-setup.com) is rolling out. If you restrict access to domains, add this to your allowlist of trusted domains.

• Shorter certificate lifespans are coming. Maximum certificate duration is dropping from 398 days to just 47 days over the next few years, meaning you’ll need to update certificates more regularly.

• Unified Employee Licence is now available, giving internal employees access to employee agents through Slack and Experience Cloud sites.

• Sharing calculations now run asynchronously for owner-based and account owner shares, which should help with performance.

Some of these changes will require a bit of admin effort up front, but they provide better security and more flexibility in the long run.

Analytics and personalization updates

• Tableau Next is now integrated with Data Cloud and Agentforce, allowing you to extend and customize semantic models without losing updates to the core model.

• Marketplace dashboards help you get started quickly with out-of-the-box layouts. Widget color picker and reference lines in Lightning dashboards let you highlight key data points and benchmarks more easily.

• Metadata label translation is now possible, improving localization for reports and dashboards.

• CRM Analytics now offers feature parity with Lightning reports, including the ability to pick single or multiple email addresses for subscriptions and to search data columns by API name.

• Multi-column sorting in list views is now available too.

AI-driven flow decisions

One of the most exciting additions is the ability to let artificial intelligence (AI) decide which outcome to execute in a flow, based on unstructured data or sentiment analysis. This is especially useful for categorizing inbound emails or requests where simple rules struggle. This is where AI shines, distilling intent from messages and making flows smarter.

Development updates

As is often the case, developers have plenty to get excited about this release. Highlights include:

• Lightning Web Components (LWC) can now be used for local actions in screen flows, such as displaying confirmation toasts or navigating users automatically.

• Dynamic boxcar optimization for Aura applications, which could impact callback execution order, so thorough testing is needed.

• Lightning Out 2.0 is now the preferred way to embed LWCs in external apps.

• Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS) version 2 is generally available, with updated themes and rounded components.

• Apex test execution is unified: All tests across Apex and Flow are now managed together.

• New access modifiers are required on abstract and override methods in Apex.

• Support for uploading and downloading larger binary files (up to 16MB) as content documents from external services.

• Deployment status page now shows file counts and unzipped sizes, helping you stay within limits.

Cloud updates

Sales Cloud

Agentforce SDR users connected to Microsoft Exchange can now send up to 9,800 emails a day, a significant leap that helps scale outreach activities. You can also create up to five SDR agents, each with their own criteria for record assignment, which should help larger teams manage workloads more efficiently.

Merge fields are now supported in sales email prompts, making communications feel more tailored. Sales Management Agentforce template supports pipeline management and can be configured for autonomous or human-approved updates.

Other updates include:

• Sales Coach now supports preview and validation, as well as improved language support for global teams.

• Salesforce AI can now research accounts and summarize records with a click, saving time.

• Opportunity line item splits now roll revenue up to the correct forecasting period, and consumption forecasting can match custom fiscal years.

• Segmentation and alignment formulas, as well as territory optimization, now benefit from AI suggestions.

• Email threads in Einstein Activity Capture are now grouped, and potential new contacts are surfaced from activity.

• Email verification is now enforced. Only users with verified return email addresses (created after November 2016) can send emails.

Service Cloud

Agentforce Service Assistance now employs semantic search to suggest similar past cases, helping agents resolve issues faster, and knowledge article sources are now cited in service plans. Agentforce Employee Agent can now close cases, easing the burden on reps, while improved reporting shines a light on individual contributions through case team roles.

Service-Level Agreement (SLA) and milestone management is more flexible, allowing reps to pause timers when cases are outside their control and making entitlement setup more straightforward.

Marketing Cloud

• Marketing Cloud Next enhancements include agentic marketing to assist with campaign creation, lead optimization, and qualification.

• In-app and mobile messaging improvements include push notifications and interactive features like carousels.

• Email templates and reusable content blocks help make campaign creation faster.

• Personalized landing pages and form handler data from external sources are now supported.

• Visualizations for marketing performance in insights dashboards now include line charts for trends across more channels.

Experience Cloud

You can now use static resource images in screen flow display text components, making it simpler to maintain consistent visuals across sites. If you have any references to legacyforce.com URLs, now is the time to update, as redirects are being fully phased out.

For user experience, session timeouts are now flagged with a new 30-second warning, helping users avoid losing unsaved work unexpectedly.

Beta features to watch

A number of promising beta features are debuting in the Winter ’26 release, giving early adopters the chance to experiment with upcoming functionality and prepare for what’s next.

• Sales Development Representative (SDR) Analytics dashboard assesses agent effectiveness with flexible filtering and breakdowns.

• Einstein next-generation flow creation: AI can now break down requirements and direct flow tasks automatically.

• Nested loops in flow: You can now traverse all levels of related records in a data graph, though only in auto-launched flows.

• Dark mode for Salesforce Lightning Design System 2: Users can pick a theme, though it is only available in Starter Edition for now.

While these features aren’t guaranteed to become generally available, they offer a glimpse of where Salesforce is heading and may be worth exploring in a sandbox environment.

The bottom line

The Salesforce Winter ’26 release brings a host of improvements, from smarter automation and AI-driven processes to important security and usability enhancements. To see the full range of updates and real-world discussion, watch the full webinar on demand.

If you have questions about these features or need help planning your next steps, contact our team to discuss how we can support your Salesforce journey.