Salesforce Summer‘21 Release: Being prepared – what you need to know
Although the latest Spring ‘21 release has provided Salesforce users across the globe with a plethora of exceptional new features, Salesforce professionals are now eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Summer ‘21 updates. Here’s what you need to know in anticipation of the new release:
Preparation
There are many items that you need to prepare in order for a new Salesforce release to be effective across your implementation. However the essential tasks that need to happen at this stage include preparing your sandbox and determining the time at which your instance of the platform will be upgraded.
Summer ‘21 Release Dates
One of the most important things you need to be aware of is when your existing Salesforce instance will be upgraded to the latest release version. Testing all of your main features in Salesforce before the suggested dates is best practice to ensure everything is still working as it should and although Salesforce rarely has any bugs, it’s essential that these checks are completed before a new release is launched.
The Summer ‘21 release dates will depend on your instance of Salesforce. If you are not familiar with which instance you are on, you can check this in a number of ways:
1. The browser URL if myDomain is not enabled.
2. Looking at the company information in Setup.
3. Using nslookup.
4. This is an example of an org where My Domain is not enabled and you can see the instance name UM5 is displayed in the URL:
5. Where My Domain has been enabled the URL will look something like this:
6. You will need to go to the Company Information page in Setup and locate the Instance field. This particular org is on UM4.
7. An alternative method is to use nslookup with the My Domain URL as input and run this from a terminal or command prompt:
Once you know the instance your organisation is using, you can check the maintenance window at https://trust.salesforce.com/en/ which will confirm the date the Summer ‘21 Release will be unveiled across your Salesforce platform.
Here is the overall status of UM4.
If you click on the Maintenance tab you will be presented with all the details about upcoming upgrades.
Key Summer 21 Release Dates
The Release Date for Summer ’21 will depend on your instance of Salesforce, but the key dates which are all on a weekend are as follows:
- 15th May 2021
- 4th June 2021
- 11th & 12th June 2021
Summer ‘21 Sandbox Preview
Another key element to release updates is understanding when your Sandbox is going to be upgraded. This is extremely important to ensure that you have the ability to test your existing system with the new release.
Salesforce has two release windows for sandboxes and it all depends on whether yours is a ‘Preview’ or ‘Non-Preview Instance’ – The first upgrade is expected during the weekend of 8 May 2021. If you can’t wait until then, you can check out some of the features in the Pre-Release Org which were upgraded from 15 April 2021.
A Pre-Release Org is a special environment where you can trial the new features weeks in advance. Due to not being linked to your production org, it won’t have your data, configuration or code, so you can have early access to test the brand-new features without worrying about breaking anything.
Sign up at https://www.salesforce.com/form/signup/prerelease-summer21/ and Salesforce will send login information for your new Summer ‘21 trial account.
Summer ‘21 Release Notes
Although the above dates are really important to log in your diary, it is really important to take a look at this release’s Salesforce Release Notes. The Release Notes provide an insight into the new features, changes and updates you can expect. As we patiently wait for the Summer ‘21 Release Notes, you can discover more about the previous release over at Salesforce Help.
Need Salesforce support?
If your organisation uses Salesforce, you may already be comfortable with the requirements of a new release, however if you are unsure where to start, help is available. We have our release readiness service on hand to help you test and transition to the new release. Our registered Salesforce partner team is available to provide as much or as little support that you may need. Contact us on 033 0233 0229 or get in touch on https://www.linkedin.com/company/coacto-ltd/
