With the new Salesforce release coming up, I'm feeling a bit anxious about our customizations. What is your routine for testing in a Preview Sandbox? How do you prioritize which new features to enable, and what is the best way to communicate these changes to the executive team who may not understand the technical impact?
3 answers
The first thing I do is check the "Trust" site to see the release dates for my specific instance. Then, I make sure at least one of my Sandboxes is on the preview instance to get early access. I focus my testing on "Critical Updates" and anything involving Apex or Flows, as those are most likely to be impacted. For the executives, I create a one-page "Impact Summary." I don't list every technical change; I only highlight the three features that will improve productivity or solve existing pain points. This turns a "technical chore" into a "business value" conversation.
Do you usually use a Full Sandbox for these release tests, or do you find that a Developer Pro sandbox is enough to catch most of the potential bugs? I'm curious because our Full Sandbox refresh is on a long cooldown right now.
Join the "Release Readiness Trailblazers" group on the Trailhead Community. It’s the best place to see what other Admins are reporting in real-time during the preview window.
Great advice, Linda. That group saved me last year when there was a bug with the mobile app navigation that wasn't mentioned in the main release notes!
Joseph, while a Full Sandbox is ideal for data-heavy testing, a Developer Pro is usually fine for UI and logic testing. As long as you have a representative sample of data to run your Flows against, you should be able to identify any major breaking changes in the new release without waiting for a full refresh cycle.