Use the published Salesforce Publishing Cycle to plan sandbox validation, internal regression, and production cutover so your org lands on the new release without incident.
- Pull the release calendar
Visit status.salesforce.com and look up your instance maintenance window. Note the production cutover date and the preview pod upgrade date.
- Refresh a sandbox onto the preview pod
Identify your full-copy sandbox. Two days after the preview pod upgrades, refresh the sandbox so it lands on the new release. The refresh wipes any in-flight work; coordinate with developers first.
- Run automated regression
Trigger your Apex unit tests, integration sanity scripts, and any UI smoke suite against the refreshed sandbox. Capture failures with stack traces. Differentiate platform-caused failures from in-flight feature breakage.
- Read the release notes for your features
Open the release notes PDF. Skim the index. Read the Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Platform Apex, and any industry-cloud sections relevant to your org. Flag any deprecations that hit your code.
- File support cases for blockers
For any regression issue you cannot explain, open a case with the case template Release Issue. Reference the release name and the specific sandbox instance. Cases filed during the preview window get priority routing.
- Freeze and validate on cutover weekend
The week of the production cutover, freeze your internal change set deploys. The Monday after, run a single smoke pass against production. Resume normal change management once verified.
CS-numbered sandbox pod that receives the new release four to five weeks early. Refresh a sandbox onto it to test.
Salesforce-hosted site with demos, videos, and a slide deck for each release. Built for admins to socialize the release internally.
Specific platform changes flagged for activation. Some are auto-activated on the release; others give admins a window to opt in.
The roughly 600-page document that lists every change in the cycle. Indexed by cloud and feature area.
- Salesforce will not let you skip a release. Every org is on the latest version after the cycle cutover. There is no opt-out or version pinning.
- The preview pod is shared. Refreshing a sandbox there during the busiest week of preview testing can take several hours because the pod is at refresh capacity.
- Deprecation runways close. A feature deprecated 18 months ago will be retired this cycle. Read the Retiring section in detail, not just the new feature highlights.
- Knowledge and Experience Cloud publishing cycles are separate from the platform cycle. A platform release does not auto-publish your draft articles or site changes; those still need their own publish actions.