How to Activate Critical Updates in Salesforce

What Are Salesforce Critical Updates?

Every few months, Salesforce rolls out platform-level changes called Critical Updates — improvements to performance, security, logic, and usability that affect how your org operates.

These are not optional enhancements. They are mandatory changes that will be automatically enforced on a set auto-activation date, whether you test them or not.

The difference between teams that get ahead of this and teams that scramble at the last minute? Knowing where to find them, understanding their impact, and activating them on your own timeline before Salesforce does it for you.

Here’s why this matters: <strong>83% of Fortune 500 companies</strong> run on Salesforce, and <strong>91% of all companies with more than 10 employees</strong> use some form of CRM. When a platform-wide update drops, it touches virtually every corner of modern sales and operations.

Why You Can’t Afford to Ignore Critical Updates

Ignoring Critical Updates is one of the most common — and costly — mistakes Salesforce admins make.

Here’s what happens when you wait too long:

• Salesforce auto-activates the update on the scheduled date, permanently, with no rollback option
• Custom code, Apex triggers, Visualforce pages, and third-party integrations can break without warning
• Your team loses access to features or encounters unexpected errors mid-workflow

Salesforce CRM users report a 38% faster decision-making speed and an 18.4% jump in revenue when their platform is running optimally. That optimisation only happens when your org is current and stable — not when you’re firefighting broken automations after a forced update.

The smart move is to test updates in a sandbox first, understand the impact on your customisations, and activate them on your schedule. This guide shows you exactly how.

Where to Find Critical Updates in Salesforce

Salesforce has evolved its update management interface over time. The older Critical Updates node in Setup has now been largely replaced by the newer Release Updates interface, which provides more detail and better filtering.

Here’s where to look:

Classic Critical Updates path: Setup → In the Quick Find box, type “Critical Updates” → Select Critical Updates

New Release Updates path (recommended): Setup → In the Quick Find box, type “Release Updates” → Select Release Updates

The Release Updates page organises pending changes into tabs:

• Needs Action — Updates with outstanding steps before the deadline
• Due Soon — Updates whose completion date is approaching
• Overdue — Updates past their recommended action date
• Complete — Updates already activated or auto-enforced

Each update listing shows you the title, a brief description, the Complete Steps By date, and whether testing is supported.

How to Activate Critical Updates in Salesforce: Step by Step

Step 1 — Log into Salesforce and go to Setup

Click the gear icon in the top-right corner and select Setup. You need System Administrator permissions to manage Critical Updates.

Note: If a new Critical Update has been added since your last login, Salesforce will display a notification pop-up when you first enter Setup. You can choose to view updates immediately or defer to later — but don’t dismiss and forget.

Step 2 — Navigate to Release Updates

In the Quick Find box on the left, type Release Updates and click the result.

You’ll see the full list of pending updates for your org, organised by status.

Step 3 — Review each update before activating

Click Get Started (or Review on older interfaces) next to any update you want to examine.

Each detail page provides:

• A plain-language description of what the update changes
• A list of customisations in your org that may be affected
• Whether you can test it in a sandbox before committing
• The date it will be auto-enforced

Read this section carefully. Salesforce analyses your org and flags any custom code, automations, or integrations that could be impacted. If your customisations are not affected, Salesforce may auto-activate the update without further action needed from your side.

Step 4 — Test in a Sandbox environment first

This is the step most people skip — and the step that causes the most pain later.

Before activating any update in your production org, enable it in a Sandbox environment. If you have a full or partial data sandbox, enable it there and run your standard workflows, automations, and integrations to check for unintended behaviour.

Why this matters: the more complex your org, the harder it is to trace a broken process back to a specific update. Testing individually — with days or weeks between each — lets you isolate the source of any issues quickly.

Best practice: If you don’t have a formal testing sandbox, enable the update in a training sandbox that mirrors regular user activity. You’ll observe real-world impact without affecting production data.

Step 5 — Activate the update in production

Once testing is complete and you’re confident there are no breaking changes, return to Release Updates in your production org and activate the update manually.

Click Activate (or follow the specific steps listed on the update’s detail page — some updates require multiple configuration steps before activation is enabled).

Enable updates well before the scheduled auto-activation date. This gives you time to catch problems and disable the update if needed while you fix them. After the auto-activation date, Salesforce permanently enforces the update and deactivation is no longer possible.

Step 6 — Monitor and validate

After activation, monitor your org for 1–2 business days. Check:

• Email alerts and notification workflows are firing correctly
• Automation rules and flows are running as expected
• Apex triggers and custom code are not throwing errors
• Third-party integrations are passing and receiving data correctly

If issues surface, check the Salesforce Debug Log and cross-reference with the update’s detail page for known impact areas. For unresolvable issues, open a case with Salesforce Support or consult the Trailblazer Community — both are strong resources for update-related troubleshooting.

Best Practices for Managing Salesforce Critical Updates

Start early. Salesforce sends email notifications to admins when new Critical Updates are added. Review them as they arrive rather than waiting until they pile up.

Activate one at a time. If you activate multiple updates simultaneously and something breaks, you won’t know which update caused it. Space them out by days or weeks.

Document your testing. Keep a record of which updates you tested, in which sandbox, and what results you observed. This makes regression testing faster and gives you a clear audit trail.

Involve your developers and third-party vendors. If your org has custom Apex code or external integrations, loop in your development team or the app vendor before activating. Some updates — especially around API versions or security policies — can affect integrations in non-obvious ways.

Check status.salesforce.com. Salesforce enforces updates aligned with its standard release schedule (Spring, Summer, Winter). For instance-specific enforcement dates, check your org’s instance on the Salesforce status page.

Common Types of Critical Updates You’ll Encounter

Not all Critical Updates are equal. Here are the categories you’re most likely to see:

Security updates — Changes to user access policies, guest user record access, MFA requirements, and enhanced domain enforcement. These tend to have the most organisation-wide impact if ignored.

API retirement updates — Salesforce periodically retires older API versions. If your integrations are running on deprecated API versions, these updates will break them at the enforcement date.

Browser compatibility updates — Updates that align Salesforce with modern browser requirements, including changes that affect how third-party cookies and domains are handled.

Performance and logic updates — Improvements to how Salesforce processes automation, record sharing, or formula evaluations. These can affect custom logic and trigger behaviour.

Enhanced domain enforcement — Salesforce now requires all orgs to use Enhanced Domains. Legacy domain formats like site-name.site.force.com redirect to the new format, and updates in this category finalise that migration.

Salesforce Release Cycle and Update Frequency

Salesforce operates on a three-release-per-year schedule:

• Spring Release — February/March
• Summer Release — June/July
• Winter Release — October/November

Each major release may introduce new Critical Updates or advance the enforcement date of existing ones. With each new release, some updates that were in “Needs Action” status will move to “Overdue” or be automatically enforced.

Given that Salesforce’s ecosystem is projected to create 9.3 million jobs and generate $1.6 trillion in new business revenue by 2026, the platform is evolving rapidly. Staying current with updates isn’t just about keeping the lights on — it’s about staying in a position to take advantage of new capabilities as they land.

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What Happens If You Don’t Activate Critical Updates

If you miss the activation window and Salesforce auto-enforces an update, here’s what to expect:

The update is permanent. Once Salesforce auto-activates an update, you cannot disable it. Any broken customisations will need to be fixed against the new behaviour, not rolled back.

Your team gets disrupted. Users encountering errors in email workflows, broken automations, or failed integrations tend to lose confidence in the CRM fast. 70% of sales professionals say their CRM helps them close more deals — but only when it’s working correctly.

You lose testing time. The value of the opt-in period is precisely that you can toggle the update on and off, observe its impact, and make targeted fixes. After auto-activation, that window is gone.

Difference Between Critical Updates and Security Alerts

Two distinct notification types live in the Release Updates area:

Critical Updates are platform improvements that may affect customisations. They have an opt-in window during which you can test and activate manually, before Salesforce enforces them automatically.

Security Alerts are urgent notices about vulnerabilities or security policy changes that require immediate action. Unlike Critical Updates, Security Alerts don’t always have a grace period — some require same-day response. They carry additional guidance, risk classification, and recommended remediation steps.

Both appear in the Release Updates interface. Treat Security Alerts with higher urgency and action them immediately, before you process the standard update queue.

The Bigger Picture: Keeping Your CRM Running at Full Capacity

Staying on top of Critical Updates is a foundational part of maintaining a high-performing Salesforce org. But it’s just one layer.

Companies that see the highest ROI from their CRM — including a 29% increase in sales, 34% improvement in sales productivity, and 27% increase in customer retention — are the ones treating their CRM as an active asset, not a passive database.

That means clean data, current integrations, trained users, and a properly administered platform. Critical updates are a key part of keeping that foundation stable.

For every $1 spent on CRM, the average return is $8.71. Protecting that investment starts with something as fundamental as not letting your platform fall behind on mandatory updates.

Conclusion

Activating Critical Updates in Salesforce isn’t the most glamorous part of running a revenue team — but it’s one of the most important.

The process is straightforward: go to Setup, navigate to Release Updates, review each update’s impact on your customisations, test in a sandbox, then activate in production ahead of the auto-enforcement date.

What separates high-performing Salesforce orgs from chaotic ones is rarely the platform itself — it’s how consistently the admin keeps it current and clean.

With Salesforce holding a 21.8% share of the global CRM market — more than its next four competitors combined — the platform isn’t going anywhere. And neither are its release cycles. Build a habit around review and activation, and your org will be one fewer source of stress on your team.

Stay current. Stay in control. And make sure the pipeline feeding your CRM is just as healthy as the platform itself.