The Salesforce Winter ‘24 release is here. We’ve combed through the release notes to compile this list of features we think may be beneficial for nonprofits.

Unless otherwise noted, everything here is included with the Enterprise Edition licenses nonprofits are granted, and can be easily set up by an organization Admin.

 

1. Generative AI

It was the big news coming out of Dreamforce, and soon everyone will be able to take advantage of the time savings and insights that the new Einstein 1 platform brings.

While there will be a lot more coming over the next few years, Salesforce is rolling out some features right away in the Winter ‘24 release. The most interesting and accessible out of the gate is the ability compose “sales” emails using Generative AI.

 

 

Exchange “Sales” for “Fundraising” and Einstein 1 and the upcoming Einstein CoPilot have the promise to save donor dollars and the organization’s most precious resource: time. It’s nice to see a taste of what’s to come so quickly in this release.

 

2. Permission Set Improvements

The security layer of Salesforce can get complex, but it’s vitally important that Nonprofit Admins configure Salesforce so donor and program recipient data is only visible and editable to those who should see the data. Salesforce has invested a great deal in making these security tools easier to configure and analyze. Winter ‘24 brings a lot of welcome changes. If an organization hasn’t invested in managing access almost entirely through Permission Sets rather than Profiles, now is the time to start.

In Winter ‘24 you can finally report on custom permission sets and permission set group assignments. You simply need to create a report type for it first (select Permission Set Assignment as the primary object).

Even better is the new ability to see an at-a-glance Summary of everything in a Permission Set. Look for the button “View Summary (Beta)” on the Permission Set. From there you can see details on the Permission Set, which Groups the Permission Set is assigned to, Object and field assignments, System settings, and more.

 

 

Bonus improvement – no more selecting fields in a Permission Set checkbox by checkbox, thanks to a welcome new Select All checkbox at the top.

 

3. See Improved Color Contrast in UI Elements

When Salesforce made the change from “Classic” to Lightning years ago, one of the downsides the community consistently complained about was the lack of contrast of elements on the screen. It was often difficult to find an important section in a sea of muted blue and grey. Over time, Salesforce has received that feedback well and made steady improvements. Winter ‘24 brings another leap forward with much needed “pop.”

No more squinting at the screen to see if a field is editable, for example.

 

 

 

4. New Analytics Tab Improvements

The unified Analytics tab was released in previous version. In Winter ‘24, it has some much needed upgrades. Now is the time to replace the “Reports” tab in your app with this all-in-one time saver.

You can now dig deeper to see details about a report without adding more columns to your layout.

 

 

Nonprofits need to know that the data in Salesforce is trusted, or they will continue to rely on outdated processes like exporting to spreadsheets to build out the insight they need. These new Analytics features, made even better with the CRM Analytics add-on, are essential.

If you’ve been using Salesforce for a while, this was a feature that was sorely missed with the move from Classic to Lightning and is making its welcome return in Winter ‘24: Visual aid when building Summary Formulas. Summary Formulas are powerful, but can also be confusing for Admins to build. These guides make it easier to get the formula right the first time. We can’t wait for Generative AI to help us out there!

 

5. Improvements to Flow

Flow is the center of all automation and as such, each release brings more refinements and improvements. The highlights of Winter ‘24 most useful to nonprofit admins include:

• Custom error messages in record-triggered flows. This will take admin time to set up, but now error messages can be tailored using the organization’s own business process and language to notify users of failed or incomplete automation.
• Auto-Layout User Interface changes – It’s much easier and faster to edit certain Flow components on the right side of the screen instead of in a pop-up window.

 

6. Engagement Studio update for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Many of our nonprofit clients use Account Engagement (Pardot) to deliver seamless experiences to their constituents. With the Winter ‘24 release, nonprofit marketing staff members will have the ability to select more precise wait times in Engagement Studio programs. Previously, wait times were limited to increments of days. Now, wait steps can be set from 2 to 8 hours.

 

Have questions about any of these features? Send us a note and we will be happy to help.