Admins / Consultants / Misc.

My Salesforce Feature Wishlist for 2025

By Tim Combridge

Can you believe it? We’re less than half a month away from 2025. It feels like just yesterday we were kicking off 2024 with big ambitions and goals for the year and a lot of excitement about what Salesforce would bring us in the upcoming year. Time flies and seems to be flying faster year by year!

I’ve been enjoying playing around in my Spring ‘25 preview org and discovering new features, and I’ve also taken some time to reflect on the things I love about Salesforce as well as the things I wish I could love if they came into existence.

Below are the top five things that I’d love to see come to Salesforce in 2025. If you’ve got the time, please share your thoughts on new features or items you’re hoping for – it’s always great to hear other ideas from the Salesforce community.

1. Editable Data Table Component for Flow

If you’ve been reading my content for a while, this one will come as no surprise. The native Data Table component for Screen Flow was a welcome surprise when it first arrived, and it has become a beloved feature when displaying data in screen flows to this day.

Prior to it being released, many Flow developers used the wonderful offering that is available at UnofficialSF, and if you’re looking for a Data Table component that you can use to display and edit records in a Flow, then this is still the go-to solution.

This is something I’d love to see come to the native Flow component in 2025. To be able to make simple, inline edits to records within our data tables without needing to install a third-party offering feels like such a simple enhancement.

This time last year, we learned that there were a number of Flow components that were getting input validation properties, and Data Table was one of them. It still feels like only a matter of time until we see editable cells in this component, and I really hope it’s something we see in 2025.

Salesforce has done a lot over the years to modernize the interface editing tools that we have – we’ve gone from page layouts to Lightning pages, from Record Detail sections to Dynamic Forms, and page-layout-driven actions and related lists to Dynamic alternatives.

Not only do these changes mean that we can make all of our interface edits directly in the Lightning App Builder, but quite often, there are additional features that make the Dynamic variants much better.

For example, if you choose to use Dynamic Forms instead of a page-layout-driven Record Details section in a Lightning page, you have the flexibility of splitting your fields across the entirety of your Lightning page, not just to a single spot on your page. You can also make use of Component Visibility filters (i.e. restrict access to certain sections or even individual fields directly on the Lightning page).

Dynamic Related Lists are another great example of where the Dynamic Lightning alternative is better in some areas. You’re given a lot more flexibility as to how the related lists actually look, and you don’t need to ensure you’re adding them to each page layout that may be used with that Lightning page.

The biggest downside, which is significant enough to be a deal breaker in many situations, is that Dynamic Related Lists do not support the mobile app. In the past, we saw features pushed out for desktop in one release and expanded to mobile in the next. Dynamic Related Lists bucked this trend, and unfortunately, still cannot be used on mobile.

This was very close to the top item in my Christmas wishlist for 2025 given its impact. I’m sure I’m not the only one who dreams of a mobile-friendly Dynamic Related List.

3. End-User-Defined/Run Flows

Summer ‘24 gave us the new Automation app, and we’ve recently received a small enhancement to it in the Spring ‘25 preview. This was an interesting move by Salesforce – we knew that they intended to bring the Setup menu up to speed by bringing in modernized menus and interfaces, but I can’t say that I know anyone who predicted that flows would be rehomed outside Setup.

The Automation app gave us a new home for flows, a handful of handy components, and the ability to manage full-fledged list views. All very welcome changes, but as we’ve seen in the Spring ‘25 preview, these are things that can be done within Setup. So, why move it to its own dedicated app?

There was some speculation at the time that Salesforce may want to give end users a bit more control over flows. In one of my past articles, I suggested that we could be close to seeing a world where users would be able “to configure their own personal or team-based flows”, which could be seen as a controversial move. One common complaint I hear about Flow is that it doesn’t have as many protections in place as Apex, with features like enforced coverage through test classes.

If done correctly, end-user flows could lead to an insane improvement in productivity. Service teams could be empowered to build their own call script flows that they could call on at a moment’s notice. Marketing teams could create flows that automatically send emails upon specified actions. That last example also shows how this functionality could be extremely dangerous if implemented wrong, so it is a feature that needs to be built correctly with proper safeguards in place.

4. Modernized Schema Builder

We’ve all at least opened the Schema Builder at least once in our Salesforce careers, and I suspect the reason that many of us may have literally only used it just once is because it has not been updated in a very long time. The UI is lacking, and performance isn’t quite up to scratch compared to many other big features in an admin’s toolbelt.

Cloud Flow Designer’s upgrade to Flow Builder in 2019 is a prime example of how much better Schema Builder could be if Salesforce gave it some attention. Imagine features such as the ability to export your current Schema Builder layout to Lucidchart or the ability to import or export an object’s XML directly via Schema Builder.

The ability to manage org default Lightning pages for specific record types could also be possible. As mentioned in point no. 2 above, there are several useful Lightning App Builder tools that Schema Builder could expose. With Record-Triggered Flows and the Flow Trigger Explorer on a per-object basis, the possibilities are endless.

5. More Functional Developer Console

I can hear the complaints already – there’s already a Developer Console, and if you need anything more than that, we have the Salesforce CLI and VS Code. While this is true, I know there’s still room for improvement in the standard Developer Console, and I know it gets a lot of use to this day.

When I’m in an org and want to quickly find out the number of records that meet certain criteria, my go-to is the Developer Console, given that it’s relatively easy to use and handy when I need it. However, the Developer Console (like Schema Builder) is starting to feel quite dated, and there are a number of features and functions that it doesn’t support but perhaps should.

First and foremost is the inability of the Developer Console to create Lightning Web Components (LWCs), and for this, we must use VS Code. While this offers a much better development environment and experience for developers, it isn’t always convenient.

For example, if an admin needed a Flow Screen Component that was open source and readily available for download, there is absolutely no way for them to upload or tweak the code using the Developer Console. This quite often leads to the import or continued use of legacy Aura components, as they’re easier to share and modify for those who don’t have VS Code set up.

Additionally, the Developer Console could do with a new user interface that also performs more efficiently. There are other tools out there that offer users a lot more access to much more performant tools (check out a few of those here), but these require either connecting with a third-party web application or using a Chrome extension. Don’t get me wrong, both options are fine, but unfortunately, they put our trusty old Developer Console to shame.

One last thing – and this one is a stretch. I’d love to see a Developer Console that performed almost like a light Salesforce CLI/VS Code hub. I’d love to be able to connect to other Salesforce orgs or GitHub directly from Salesforce and move metadata around freely. This would be another nail in the coffin for change sets; which reminds me – we’ve seen Salesforce deploy functionality of this power in web apps before with DevOps Centre.

If Salesforce expanded on its web-based dev tools with Lightning Developer Console (Salesforce, feel free to take that name suggestion and use it if you’d like!), it would enable admins and developers alike to have more flexibility over where they work, and more importantly, would ensure they always have access to modern tools like LWC and don’t need to resort to Aura.

Final Thoughts

There’s no denying the fact that 2024 was a big year for Salesforce, and that’s without mentioning Agentforce too much in this post. If the Spring ‘25 release is any sign of things to come, we’re going to see a cracker of a year in the Salesforce space in 2025 as well.

Please share your thoughts! As I said at the beginning, it’s always great to hear and share ideas with other Salesforce enthusiasts. Salesforce has always encouraged collaboration across the community with tools like the IdeaExchange. Offerings become better through shared suggestions, so get to sharing!

Thank you for reading and engaging with these articles in 2024. I very much appreciate each and every person who reads these, and I am ecstatic to continue to share and collaborate with you all in 2025.

The Author

Tim Combridge

Tim is the Managing Director at Sensible Giraffe, passionately educating others via high-quality blog content.

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Comments:

    Daryl moon
    December 23, 2024 9:52 pm
    YES to Schema Builder getting some love. ❤️ It’s been neglected for far too long.