Intro

The sun is (was) out, and Salesforce has rolled out its Summer '26 release. As ever, three times a year Salesforce drops a fresh batch of updates, enhancements and new features, and the full release notes are a door-stopper.

Most production orgs update over the next few release weekends, and many sandboxes have been running the preview since the start of May, so you may have already spotted some of this in the wild. Below, we've summarised the bits we think matter most to admins at smaller organisations, starting with a short list of things worth acting on, since this release includes a few of them.

Worth acting on first

These might not make your week more fun (or maybe it will), but a few minutes now saves a lot of time later!

Microsoft 365 authentication is changing

If you use Einstein Activity Capture to sync email and calendar from Microsoft 365, the underlying authentication is moving to Microsoft Graph. The short version: the old connection will simply stop working from 3rd August unless you re-authenticate. There's no clever workaround: it just needs to be done before the deadline. If you don’t get around to it, it shouldn’t cause any major issues, but users will all need to reauthenticate.

Email "from the current user" and domain verification

Domain verification has been a recurring theme over the last couple of releases, and Summer '26 introduces changes for people who use an org but don't send email from its domain (e.g., consultants, volunteers, auditors, or external users acting through a site).

The practical risk is anywhere a flow or a button sends an email "from the current user," and that user isn't on a verified domain. The good news is it's not a hard "no"; those users can be authorised to send from a ‘substitute email address’, but it takes a few setup steps. Salesforce's release note on this walks through what's needed, and it's worth a look if this change affects you.

The old single sign-on (SAML) framework is being retired

If you use Single Sign On and your org is still on Salesforce's original single-configuration SAML framework, this release enforces a move to the newer multiple-configuration framework. This only affects fairly old setups, so anything configured more recently should already be on the new framework. The quickest way to check is whether the "Migrate to a Multiple-Configuration SAML Framework" Release Update appears in your org. If it doesn't, there's nothing to do.

Profile Filtering is on by default

Users can no longer see profile names other than their own unless they have the "View All Profiles" permission. Harmless for most, but if you've built any automation or flow logic that reads or compares users' profile names, give it a once-over as those names may now come back empty for ordinary users (admins should be unaffected).

Apex Triggers always run in system mode

Apex Triggers (on all API versions) will start running in ‘System Mode’ by default, which may affect some of your current trigger logic. If you’re not a developer yourself, speak with your developers to understand if this change will affect you.

Slack, now bundled in

The headline platform change is that all new orgs now automatically include a Slack org. Salesforce continues to fold Slack into the core product rather than treating it as a bolt-on. We wouldn't read this as "free Slack for everyone" just yet, but the two are increasingly sold as one.

If you already have Slack or are considering procuring it, the more interesting part for day-to-day use is Slack channels for records. Once enabled for an object, a record gains a button that spins up a dedicated Slack channel for that specific record. These channels are private by default, searchable, and kept in their own section rather than cluttering your main channel list. You can invite people, auto-onboard them via email address or federation ID, and configure exactly which objects get the feature.

For a small team juggling cases or applications, the appeal is having the conversation about a record live next to the record, and being able to search a record later and find every message about it. Whether that's a genuine workflow upgrade or just another place to keep track of will depend on how your team already works, so it's one to trial rather than switch on everywhere at once.

Reports and Dashboards

Small but useful changes:

• Brand colour palettes can now be applied to reports and dashboards. A nice touch for making your dashboard look the part.

• Row-level formulas in reports have doubled from 1 to 2 (it really does help).

Salesforce Flow

As usual, Flow is where the bulk of the genuinely useful, no-code improvements live. There's a lot, so here are the highlights you’ll most likely use.

Date operators in decision logic

Decision elements can now reference dates directly instead of forcing you to build fiddly formulas: e.g. "is the anniversary of today", "within the last X months", "this year", "next year", "on a specific date", and so on. It doesn't unlock anything you couldn't technically do before, but it makes time-based logic far more readable, which matters when you (or the next admin) come back to a flow in six months. One caveat: this is in decision logic, not yet in entry conditions, so scheduled-flow entry criteria still can’t meaningfully use dates.

Deploy email-template flows without the manual fix

A nice fix for anyone working across sandboxes and production: email template references in flows are now stored as references that survive a deployment, rather than IDs that broke on the other side. No more manually repointing templates after every deployment.

Screen flow improvements

A grab-bag of things that make screen flows nicer to build and to use:

• Toast messages (those small green "Success!" pop-ups - below) can now appear mid-flow, so you don't need a whole screen just to say something worked.

• An ‘Open a Page’ action can send the user straight to a newly created record or a URL, so you can guide someone through a process and drop them exactly where they need to be at the end.

• Lookup fields in data tables can now be displayed as the record's name with a clickable link. This still doesn't work for the table's own records, only the lookups, but it's a step in the right direction.

• Images can be added inline to display text, a horizontal radio button group gives you a tidier selection layout, and you can now write formulas directly into action inputs rather than first creating a resource for each one. A small mercy for anyone whose resource list has grown to be impenetrable!

Easier to test and maintain

Two useful additions for keeping flows healthy:

• A flow version comparison lets you pick two versions and see what changed. It can be a little hard to read in practice, but it provides more context and information.

• A new element error rate column on the Flows list view gives you better at-a-glance analytics, which is mostly relevant if you're running high volumes and want to keep an eye on which flows are misbehaving.

Case management

Two beta features worth a look if cases are part of your world:

• Rich text case descriptions mean formatting, images and hyperlinks can be captured properly in the description, rather than collapsing into a wall of plain text.

• ‘Enhanced Case Merge’ lets you create custom matching rules that surface potential duplicate cases proactively. With a Duplicate Cases component, you can add it to the case page to spot and act on suggestions in real time. Both are in beta, so test before relying on them.

For the developers among you

A fair chunk of this release is developer-focused; most admins can happily skip ahead. That said, admins often straddle the line between code and configuration, so we thought we’d include them.

• State managers for Lightning Web Components are now generally available, giving larger component apps a proper, standard way to manage shared state.

• ‘Elastic limits’ for asynchronous jobs (beta) let you enqueue Queueable and future jobs up to twice your org's daily limit; anything over the licensed limit is throttled rather than blocked outright.

• A handful of security defaults are changing for newer API versions: database operations run in user mode by default, classes enforce sharing rules by default, and WITH SECURITY_ENFORCED is removed in favour of WITH USER_MODE. Existing code on older API versions keeps its current behaviour unless you bump the version, so nothing breaks overnight, but it's worth knowing before you raise an API version.

A new Web Console (beta)

Salesforce has introduced ‘Web Console’: a modern, lightweight, in-browser tool with a SOQL Builder and Query Planner, Execute Anonymous, and a code editor (including LWC). It's pitched as a fast, in-context troubleshooting tool, available to every org, including Free and Starter. In practice, it reads like a much-improved drop-in replacement for the old Developer Console, and we suspect it'll become the day-to-day default for quick jobs before long.

Final thoughts

Summer '26 is a big one. As always, the full release notes have every last detail, and Trailhead is the place to go for hands-on learning. If you'd like a hand working out what any of this means for your org, you know where to find us. Happy Summer '26 release!