Contents
- Introduction
- What are Enhanced Domains
- Why it's important
- Timeline
- Consequences
- Helpful Links
- Conclusion
Introduction
Welcome to this dedicated article on the upcoming Enhanced Domains update. This article aims to condense all the information you may need on the new update, hopefully, making it easier to understand and explain to customers what it is going to mean for their Salesforce Orgs. More information can be found on help.salesforce.com and useful links can be found at the bottom of this post.
What are Enhanced Domains?
Enhanced Domains are an update to salesforces “My Domain”. Prior to enhanced domains ‘My Domain’ was a customer’s way of customising their URL on the salesforce orgs to add their branding to the Links used by the org, for example, instead of “login.salesforce.com” customers have customized to “myamazingcompany.salesforce.com”. However, it became necessary to update the way these links work and it will now be made mandatory to use Enhanced Domains in upcoming updates.
The main difference between enhanced domains and my domains is the fact that enhanced domains are designed to meet compatibility rules for new browser updates. Due to an attempt to crack down on the use of third-party cookies to gather information from users on the internet, browsers have prevented the use of third-party links.
This is good for user privacy; however, some Salesforce links are currently dependent on being formatted as third-party links. This means with the new update, they will be blocked from use causing the need for the Enhanced Domains which negates this problem while keeping the benefits of My Domains.
Why it's important
This update is important because of its potential ramifications if it is not dealt with early and efficiently. If the URLs are not set up correctly, it may cause users to be unable to access certain parts of an org, as well as prevent tools that use such links to fail.
The timeline below outlines the opportunity provided by Salesforce for customers to resolve these issues before the update is required and Enhanced Domains are assigned to orgs without them already.
Benefits
The main benefit of using Enhanced Domains is the ability to avoid your org being incompatible with the most up-to-date Browsers. Newer browsers are removing cross-site scripting as much as possible which has a detrimental effect on Salesforce orgs. Aside from that, Enhanced Domains share the same benefits as My Domains. They allow a company to add another type of branding to their Salesforce Org through their URL links and allow the links to be more user-friendly and simpler to use. For example, a company can design their Salesforce URL to be more friendly like myamazingcompany.salesforce.com.
Timeline
It must be stressed that getting this sorted out sooner will minimise the potential issues caused. Salesforce understands this and provides users with a small delay before it is completely mandatory for production orgs in the Spring ’23 update.
In Winter ’23, Enhanced Domains will automatically be applied to non-production and sandbox orgs that haven’t postponed the update to Spring ’23. Instructions on postponing an update can be found here.
Consequences
Potential issues caused by not implementing Enhanced Domains properly before the updates could be widespread and grind productivity to a complete halt depending on the org.
The new update is important and will require changes to many settings in Salesforce in most cases. If it is left until the last minute, it can have a big impact on orgs and the user’s experience using the orgs. Some potential impacts include:
- Users’ encountering errors accessing Salesforce, as well as Experience Cloud sites, Salesforce Sites, VisualForce pages and possibly more.
- Some embedded content stored on Salesforce will no longer appear.
- Third-Party applications can lose access to data.
- Single Sign-on integrations with sandboxes can fail.
- Single sign-on integrations with orgs using *.cloudforce.com and *.database.com domain suffixes can fail. These are legacy domains which may be in use with customers who have been on the Salesforce platform from the early days of the Salesforce ecosystem.
These impacts will depend on the orgs current set up which is why it is vital it is investigated before the new update lands and forces the changes on the org. Most issues can be attributed to Third Party Cookie errors caused by the browser noticing Salesforce use Cross-site resources, and even with enhanced domains enabled and tested some errors may persist.
However, these can mostly be eradicated by using Lightning Experience or users may also receive a warning telling them to open in another tab or window.com
Helpful Links
- Enhanced Domain / My Domain formats
- Enhanced Domains Docs
- Instructions for postponing the enforcement of Enhanced Domains for Non-Production Orgs
Conclusion
The main takeaway from this information about Enhanced domains is that they are necessary, they are going to be enforced, and not being prepared for when they are enforced will have serious impacts on orgs that rely on cross-site resources. Aside from the urgency involved in getting them implemented, they are also a decent overall improvement to the user experience in Salesforce and Salesforce is going to provide plenty of support to diminish any issues users might face getting them set up.
Need assistance with the above? Pexlify's Support Services can help you sustain your Salesforce platform over time and keep your internal knowledge base current.
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This blog post was written by Salesforce Developer, Stephen Creighton.
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