"What's Actually Changing in Salesforce This Summer" - The Fast Slow Motion Podcast - Ep 064

In this episode of The Fast Slow Motion Podcast, Eric Housh sits down with Jonathan Veazey, Director of Architecture at Fast Slow Motion, to break down what business leaders actually need to know about the Salesforce Summer '26 release. The tension is straightforward: several changes are already being enforced, and most business owners don't know they're coming.

Jonathan walks through the security changes hitting the platform now — MFA enforcement for all users, stricter authentication requirements for system admins, and a new step that may prompt users to re-verify when running reports. He also covers what AgentForce maturing into real infrastructure means for AI investment, flow updates that reduce errors and build time, and how Salesforce's move to host MCP servers opens the door to connecting external AI tools directly to your data.

If your business runs on Salesforce, this episode gives you the clarity to ask the right questions of your team before deadlines pass.

For the full episode video, show notes, and related resources, visit: https://loom.ly/EVrJp-M

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This release is one that business leaders need to know about. It's not just for the technical teams, while there are still several technical updates to share. So several things are happening all at once. And some of them, like you said, have timelines that are approaching. So it's important that we address these things. The goal today is for us to help those leaders understand what they're required to do and give them some opportunities where they can see maybe a future of for AI in their business.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

This podcast is brought to you by Fast Slow Motion, a team of expert consultants that have helped thousands of growing businesses build scalable systems on the HubSpot and Salesforce platforms. To learn more, visit www.fastslowmotion.com. Welcome to the Fast Slow Motion Podcast, where we discuss strategies, ideas, and insights about how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. If you use Salesforce to run your business, this episode's for you. Salesforce releases updates three times a year, and each release brings changes across the platform, so new capabilities, security improvements, and overall shifts in how the system works. The Summer 26 release is one really worth paying attention to. There are security changes with hard deadlines, some just weeks away, that will affect how your team logs in, how they run reports, and how your system admins work inside the platform. On top of that, there are meaningful updates to AI automation and how Salesforce is positioning itself for the next few years. To help break all this down, I'm joined by Jonathan Feese, our director of architecture here at Fast Slow Motion. Jonathan leads our Salesforce Release training internally and is the person our team turns to when they need to understand what's actually changing and what it means for our clients. Jonathan, thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Yeah, absolutely. Glad to be here. Yeah, like you said, this release is one that business leaders need to know about. It's not just for the technical teams, while there are still several technical updates to share. So several things are happening all at once. And some of them, like you said, have timelines that are approaching. So it's important that we address these things. The goal today is for us to help those leaders understand what they're required to do and give them some opportunities where they can see maybe a future of for AI in their business.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Jonathan, we we alluded to this a couple of times already. There are some deadlines coming up. Let's start with that. These are changes to security. Uh, these changes are rolling out. Uh, what makes this release unusual is that these aren't optional upgrades, they're enforcements. Can you kind of walk us through what's actually changing there?

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Yeah, sure. So Salesforce is really making a coordinated push on security. And so the reasons for this are largely due to AI. And so as the platform expands into more AI-driven capabilities, Salesforce needs to make sure that the platform is secure from all angles and there's no way to get around that security. And so think of it this way: the more powerful the tools, the stronger the locks seem to be. Three main things are changing. So how users log in, and then how users with elevated access log in, and then how the system handles certain activity like running reports. None of these things are things the business can opt out of. They're enforced across the board and the deadlines are approaching.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

So there's two different situations here, right? One for all users, and then a stricter requirement for what Salesforce is calling privileged users. What's the difference there and what does it mean practically for a business owner?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Yeah, sure. So for all users, they previously had the ability to skip multi-factor authentication. And so they could waive this requirement to a later date. And so that's now going away. There's no exceptions. And so any user, regardless of their access level, is gonna have to use MFA. And for those users that have elevated access, so system admins and then Salesforce's earmarked, a couple of other permissions, they will have to have what Salesforce is terming phishing resistant MFA. And so, in plain terms, they're gonna have to use a physical security key or some type of touch ID in order to authenticate into Salesforce. And so for most businesses, this is not gonna be a major hurdle. So a fingerprint option on a MacBook is fairly straightforward, but it is something that you have to intentionally do and roll out to your teams and communicate. And so while these security updates are required and the deadlines are approaching, this is also a really good opportunity for you to evaluate the admins that you do have in your system. And so what we see it happens a lot of times is businesses will grant permissions to users that they don't really need, just for the convenience of allowing the user to do something in the system. But what they're gonna have to evaluate now is okay, now that we have this additional security requirement, do we really need these users to have these additional permissions? Because if they do, they're gonna have to have additional authentication hurdles to hop through.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

One of the other changes that could impact, I think, a lot of people on a day-to-day basis is how Salesforce is gonna handle report access. So what should leaders be telling their team so this doesn't catch anyone off guard?

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Salesforce is adding a step where users may be asked to verify again. So once they're already authenticated into Salesforce, they may be asked to authenticate again when they're running a report or trying to export something if the system is detecting anomalous behavior. Now, what that means exactly, we don't know. But what it means on a practical level is that if a sales rep is running a report in the morning, they might get flagged and have to authenticate again in order to see that data. And so it's important to tell your teams, hey, this is not a glitch. This is Salesforce protecting your data, particularly around what gets exported. And so uh it's an important thing for leaders to be aware of that so they know it's coming. It's probably uh gonna have stir up a lot of conversation in the Salesforce ecosystem just because it is a barrier to the user experience. But I'm confident it's something that they'll find a good solution to going forward and then everybody will be happy with.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Cool. Let's uh let's talk a little bit about Agent Force. Agent Force is a term I think a lot of leaders have been hearing. Uh there's often a gap between what gets announced at Dreamforce and what's actually usable. So, what changed in this release that signals Agent Force is moving from something you're watching to something you should be probably acting on?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yeah, probably two things stand out. The first one is that now you can use Agent Force directly inside Salesforce setup. And so this means that you can enable this and setup, and then you can have Agent Force do things like grant permissions or create fields. And so this is generally available now. It's uh it was released a couple of weeks ago. This is a big change. Like this is a nice quality of life improvement that Salesforce is rolling out. And the second is that there's a new dashboard where you can actually see more specifically what your agents are doing and how well they're performing. They're calling it the agent analytics dashboard. Together, these signal a shift from AI is coming to Salesforce to AI is here and you can start measuring it. And so the shift in setup should now allow admins more time to think strategically rather than just clicking a lot of configuration buttons. So one thing that's worth noting too is that while setup actions don't consume standard Agent Force credits, they do use a small amount of data 360 credits. Salesforce has said in their documentation that they plan to eliminate this, but that's not effective yet. And so one thing to keep an eye on is as your usage grows, it's good to keep an eye on the data 360 consumption at this point until Salesforce eliminates that from the process.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yeah, that performance dashboard feels pretty significant. Why does uh visibility into how agents are performing matter so much right now?

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Yeah, of course. Yeah, one of the biggest obstacles to AI investment is having the ability to answer the simple question of what is this actually doing? Is it working? How much does it cost? And so that dashboard answers those questions for leaders. And so that way, if I'm somebody considering an AI investment or capability for my company, I've got the ability to say, yes, we can monitor this on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And so Salesforce is giving you the tooling that you need to make decisions.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Uh let's talk automation for a minute. Salesforce, um, a lot of updates, what Salesforce calls flow, that engine that drives a lot of the automated work in the platform. Uh, what are those changes that are actually going to make a difference for business owners?

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Yeah, so the theme from this update with flow is really just reducing friction. And so things that have historically required either outside tooling or workarounds, Salesforce is trying to support more natively. And so one of those is scheduled flows. Used to be prone to errors because there was only one batch size. It would process the maximum batch size and you didn't have any control over it at all. But now you've got the ability to control that. And so this is a fairly straightforward update that allows you to toggle down the batch size for a scheduled flow, preventing errors, thus preventing somebody from having to intervene. Another one is that the team can now put within a flow the ability to navigate directly to a record page within Salesforce or an external page outside of Salesforce. And so this is something that used to require a custom workaround or, you know, a lightning web component to make something like this happen. But now it's just out of the box and it's acting like you would expect it to do. And so collectively, these reduce some build time, reduce the workarounds, and make it easier for folks building in the system to do their jobs.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Yeah, there's also a way now, as I understand it, to see exactly what's changed between one version and an automation and the next. Why does that matter from a business standpoint? Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

This is a big one because automation, particularly with Salesforce Flow, builds up over time. And that's great. The businesses evolve, and so they're adding new automation, and so they're going to be constantly building within the system. One of the challenges previously, unless you were tracking manually the differences between your versions or using an external version control system like GitHub, is that you didn't have a great way to see what is the difference between version one, version two compared to version 13. And so it can make troubleshooting, debugging more difficult than it needs to be. And so they've added in the ability to put two flow versions side by side. And then it gives you a precise breakdown of what the differences between the two are. And so for a business owner that may not be technical, what this means for you is that it's less time for your technical people that are going to be spent troubleshooting and trying to find answers, and they can build things that are new and exciting that will advance the business as opposed to trying to solve problems with existing automation.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

There's a concept I want to spend a little bit of time on, JV. Um I want to make sure we explain it clearly because it's hinting at something about where Salesforce is headed. Uh Salesforce is making changes that allow AI to operate better and more efficiently inside that platform. Spend a little time talking about that shift and why it matters.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah, of course. So Salesforce, like every other tech business, is AI forward and AI focused. And so at the end of April of this year, Salesforce made their MCP servers generally available. And so what this means is that users can connect to Salesforce via LLMs like Claude or Chat GPT and then interact with their Salesforce data. And so this is outside of the platform. And so say your organization has Claude and it's connected to your Google Drive, your Gmail, your project management tool, you can now connect to Salesforce and then you can do analysis, potentially take action cross-platform with a more holistic view of what you're doing. And so this isn't only just for business leaders either. And so Salesforce is currently releasing a beta called the Salesforce API context MCP. Well, that's a lot of big words. What does it mean? So the MCP server, which is essentially a method for more easily connecting to a platform through their APIs without having to just write every single API call. So this MCP is equipped with Salesforce schemas, best practices, and other helpful context that allow the LLM to better understand how to build within Salesforce. And so practically, the builders in the system can then work in Claude or Gemini or ChatGPT and build within Salesforce with more reliability without having to teach it the schema of Salesforce. And so for business leaders, this is the infrastructure behind the AI capabilities that they're going to be working on and investing in over the next couple of years.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Salesforce is also making a couple of tweaks to how developers can build on the platform. What is that? What are they doing differently there? And what does that mean for businesses?

SPEAKER_01 13:15

Good question. So this next update is what Salesforce is calling the multi-framework, the Salesforce multi-framework, which is funny because it's not really a framework. It's more of a framework agnostic runtime on Agent Force. And basically what it does is it allows developers to build native Salesforce apps using React and other frameworks. And so this will have authentication, security, and governance all built in. This is currently a beta and it allows more flexibility for the modern developer building on the Salesforce platform. And so the bigger picture here is that Salesforce is positioning itself as a secure, modern, flexible platform that's ready to help you take your business into the future.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Good stuff. Last thing I want to spend a little bit of time talking about might seem small, but I think it they're telegraphing something bigger. So if you're familiar with Salesforce, Chatter is that sort of internal collaboration feed that's been part of Salesforce for years. They're turning it off by default now in new Salesforce environments. What is happening and what should we be thinking about?

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah, I mean, Parker Harris said a couple years ago as the CTO of Slack that he was going to kill Chatter, and this is the beginning of that happening. And so Salesforce is making a clear statement. So the collaboration with inside the platform is going to be Slack. At this point, Chatter is not being removed. Salesforce has not announced a retirement date. And so nothing has to change today. But all new Salesforce environments, they're going to now automatically have Slack to what degree is to be determined. And like you said, Chatter will be disabled. And so when you're building the future of Salesforce and you're thinking through collaboration, community, everything that Salesforce is doing today with Chatter, that's all moving to Slack. And so that's part of the broader shift that we're seeing is Salesforce wants less to be dependent on someone sitting in front of the computer looking at a record page, and they want people to be in Slack, maybe that's mobile on the go in their car while they're in an Uber, et cetera, being able to do all the same things that they need to do where work actually happens. And obviously we know that's in Slack.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

So for a business that's on Salesforce today, but maybe they haven't done a lot with Slack, is this the moment to start paying attention or is this kind of a longer term signal?

SPEAKER_01 15:41

I think it's both. It's certainly time to start paying attention. You don't want to be in a position where you are forced to act quickly. And so if your team is managing approvals over email or collaborating in disparate channels, leaving notes in record fields, there is a better option. Slack is already able to be connected to Salesforce. It's obviously going to be more ingrained in the platform over time. And so it is time for people to think about this and develop a strategy for implementing Slack. And so think about in use case like this. You have users that are approving and editing and rejecting requests in their email today. That's a lot of back and forth. Whereas now they can get a notification in Slack, review, add it an approval emoji, and then that gets approved and updated in Salesforce. The other person is notified in Slack as well. That workflow is a lot nicer for the end user. And so the question for business owners isn't whether Slack becomes more central to how Salesforce works. It's whether their team is positioned to take advantage of it really right now and as it advances further into the platform in the future.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Good stuff. Before we wrap, uh, for the leader that wants to make sure their team's ready for what's coming in their in this release, where should they start? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Security is the most urgent thing. So this rolls out for sandboxes soon, production shortly after. So I would start with the MFA enforcement, the phishing resistant MFA enforcement. Have a conversation with whoever manages your Salesforce environment this week and ask, are we ready for the security enforcement deadlines? That's a good question. That will get you started. Salesforce has lots of good documentation on this. From there, look who in your system has system admin access or other privileged access. And then you can use that to evaluate your permissions on a holistic level and then grant the right people the permissions they need so you can roll out the phishing resistance enforcement. On the AI and automation side, you don't need to act on everything at once, but you do need to be intentional. And so obviously, all things naturally drift towards chaos. And so now is the time to get your leaders together, develop an AI strategy for your company, and start taking steps. If you're not sure where to start or what any of this means specifically for you, that's why we're here. Reach out using the links in the show notes and we can talk you through it.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Yeah, these releases, there's always a lot to consider, a lot to work through. It can feel overwhelming for business owners. And again, that's what we're here for. Uh, you can find the link in the show notes. Uh, find some more resources at fastlemotion.comslash podcast. JB, this has been a lot of fun. Let's do it again next time, man. Thanks y'all for listening.