5 Next Gen Features for Salesforce User Management

One of the most common tasks you have as a Salesforce Admin is creating or updating users. You may have already fallen into a routine while conducting the access setup and navigating the different steps, such as choosing a profile, assigning the right permission sets, or simply checking why a colleague doesn’t see a field on their page. However, you need to prepare for your routine to be fundamentally changed by the significant improvements coming your way.

In this article, we’ll go through the importance of the user management processes, what out-of-the-box functionality you can leverage, and how some of the enhancements are sure to optimize everyone’s way of working.

So It Begins…

Giving users the right access from the get-go is crucial to shaping their experience of working in Salesforce as well as within your particular implementation. Regardless of their role, not seeing the information they need or receiving red errors because they lack editing rights is not a great way to get started.

On the other hand, the process of managing users could – to a certain extent – be a shared responsibility between Salesforce Admins and delegated admins. Having it documented and properly agreed in advance will do wonders in the long run.

To improve the experience on both sides, while also ensuring that the access is properly set up, Salesforce has made notable changes during the last few releases. Let’s dive into a few of these additions – how they can help you to quickly set up and empower your users, as well as how you can easily review their existing permissions.

Long-Awaited Functionality

While there are many features we could explore when it comes to permissions, automation, and auditing, let’s zoom into the Summer ‘24 enhancements which will improve the way various user-related tasks are executed.

1. User Access Policies (GA)

Ever since user access policies appeared as a beta feature on the User Management Settings page, we knew this would be the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come next. Its main purpose is to help admins seamlessly automate the assignment or removal of permission sets, permission set groups, queue or group membership, permission set licenses, or even package licenses based on user criteria. This can be done either as a one-time action on the users who meet the criteria you set or as an ongoing automation whenever a user is created or updated.

As of Summer ’24, both the user access policies and the new enhanced UI are generally available. Even more so… While the previous cap of active policies was at 20, it has been increased to 200 in order to cover all of your org’s possible scenarios and variations – how cool is that?

To offer you even more control and the ability to orchestrate the policies, the option to set their order has been made available. If you haven’t already used them before, this is a great time to get started, test them out, and review the changes made by the policy within the access changes tab, which makes auditing a breeze.

2. View Summary for Users and Public Groups

Both of these features have been delivered by Salesforce as a result of Trailblazer Community ideas and the expressed need of Salesforce professionals for a better experience when navigating through the dozens, or potentially even hundreds, of different items a user has access to.

Potentially, one of the most exciting enhancements Salesforce came up with in recent years is the new View Summary button on the user record. No matter how experienced you are as a Salesforce Admin, having to check everything a particular user has access to can become a daunting and time-consuming task. With this new button, however, the answer to your question is a mere few clicks away, as object and field permissions, user permissions, public group, queue membership, and custom permissions will be immediately visible under their respective tab.

A similar summary view will also be available for public groups, which is focused on where the particular group is used around your org. This includes sharing rules, list views, and even report and dashboard folders.

3. View Summary on Permission Sets and Permission Set Groups

On top of the User and Group summary pages above, the one for permission sets and permission set groups (which is already in production orgs today in its beta version), will become generally available and have an improved user experience for faster navigation between the different items that can be included in a permission set or group.

After clicking the View Summary button on a permission set, for example, you can quickly see any related permission set groups the permission set is part of. You can also drill down into the object and field permissions, user permissions from the App or System Permissions sections, and starting with Summer ‘24, even custom permissions.

With all this information available in just a few clicks on one single page rather than navigating through all the sections of a permission set, the time it takes to find out the information you need will be shorter than ever!

4. New User Management Permissions

It is a best practice to avoid assigning the Manage Users permission as much as possible to non-admin users and rather explore other avenues with more limited permissions. Before this release, the ability to freeze users or review the user login history was dependent on the Manager Users permissions – this is no longer the case.

The two new user-specific options – Freeze Users and Monitor Login History – will become available as soon as your org is upgraded within the System Permissions section of your permission sets.

5. Permissions for Dev Sandbox Management

And finally, there is a brand new sandbox management permission in Summer ’24, which is sure to help you properly tailor the development team’s production access when it comes to creating, deleting, or refreshing sandboxes.

While the Manage Sandboxes permission you are most likely familiar with will still remain available, the Manage Dev Sandboxes permission will only allow access to manipulate Developer and Developer Pro sandboxes, ensuring that the full and partial copy sandboxes can only be handled by a limited number of admins.

Summary

All in all, the latest Salesforce releases may be some of the best when it comes to permissions and user management enhancements. The new ways for auditing access, quickly identifying missing permissions, and fully automating and tailoring the assignment will not only enable Salesforce professionals to leverage the out-of-the-box functionality even more, but these will significantly contribute to a smooth, error-free, user experience.

Which of the features are you planning on exploring first? Share in the comments section below!