Get Your Org Ready: Summer ’26 Admin Highlights
Summer ’26 is almost here, and that means a fresh wave of updates landing across the platform. Mark your key dates: the release notes are live now, sandbox preview begins May 8, and production orgs start upgrading May 15 through mid-June. Check the Salesforce Maintenance Calendar against your instance to confirm your exact upgrade window. With the timeline set, here’s what matters most for general admins preparing their orgs.
This release touches a wide range of areas, from how new orgs handle collaboration tools to significant accessibility improvements, tighter security controls, and some long-overdue wins for field access visibility and queue management. Whether you’re managing an enterprise org or working in a relatively fresh environment, there’s something in Summer ’26 that deserves your attention before it hits production.
Collaboration: Chatter and Salesforce Channels
Chatter Is Off by Default in New Orgs
One of the most significant structural changes in Summer ’26: Chatter will be disabled by default in any org created in Summer ’26 or later. This doesn’t affect existing orgs, but if you’re standing up a new environment, take note.
The reasoning? Salesforce channels, which bring Slack directly into Salesforce record pages, are now the default collaboration layer for Lightning Experience in Enterprise and Unlimited editions. With Salesforce channels enabled out of the box in new orgs, Chatter’s role as the default tool is stepping back.
That said, Chatter isn’t going anywhere. If your org relies on Case Feed, Experience Cloud sites, or any Chatter APIs, you’ll need to manually enable it via Setup. Search for Chatter Settings, click Edit, and select Enable. Worth noting: Chatter and Salesforce channels aren’t mutually exclusive. You can use Salesforce channels for internal collaboration and Chatter for external-facing scenarios like Experience Cloud. Just enable Feed Tracking on the objects where you want Chatter to appear.
For orgs where Slack isn’t supported, Chatter remains the right tool for the job. The key is knowing what your org actually needs before the summer release lands.
Salesforce Channels Get a New Slack Panel
Summer ’26 also introduces a dedicated Slack panel on record pages. Instead of collaboration tools competing for real estate on a busy record layout, the Slack panel opens and closes with a single click, keeping the interface clean when you’re not actively collaborating.
In new Enterprise and Unlimited orgs created in Summer ’26 and later, Salesforce channels are set up and ready to go with no manual configuration required. For other editions (Essentials, Starter, Pro Suite, Professional, Developer), you can enable Salesforce channels manually.
Accessibility: A Multi-Release Push Toward WCAG 2.2
Summer ’26 brings a meaningful wave of accessibility improvements across Lightning Experience, all tied to meeting WCAG 2.2 Resize and Reflow guidelines. This is a multi-release effort, and several updates are being enforced at different points.
Enforced in Summer ’26
Two release updates require your attention. The first covers page headers and modal windows. Without this update, zooming in over 200% causes page headers to block scrollable content and pushes modal buttons outside the visible viewport, making those windows essentially unusable. With the update enabled, headers scroll with the page and modal content stays within view.
The second update (which depends on the first being enabled) addresses date pickers, popovers, bottom utility bars, and record headers. At 400% magnification on a 1280px screen, all of these UI elements become properly usable. Truncated utility bar labels will display full text in a tooltip on hover or keyboard focus.
To prepare for the Summer ’26 updates, head to Setup, search Release Updates, and follow the testing and activation steps for each. Enable the page headers and modal windows update first since the others depend on it. These changes matter for any org supporting users with visual impairments or assistive technology needs. Proactive testing now prevents accessibility issues from hitting production.
Security and Health Check
Health Check Notifications and New Signals
Health Check now includes new monitoring signals and, by default, will send weekly notifications to admins. If you haven’t been checking Health Check regularly, Summer ’26 makes it easier to stay on top of org security posture without manually navigating there.
Salesforce Shield Improvements
For orgs running Salesforce Shield, Summer ’26 adds scheduling and automation for Data Detect scans, expands scan coverage to include encrypted data, and introduces new Profile ID and Role ID fields for all real-time events to simplify Transaction Security policy building via the Condition Builder. Field-level encryption management and encryption blocker checks are now accessible directly from the Shield App.
From the release notes: “How: In the Shield app, click the Platform Encryption tab, and then click Field Level Encryption. 1) Use the Analyze tool to find out which fields are ready to encrypt and if org configurations impact or block encryption.”
“2) Review the results of your analysis right in the app, and 3) encrypt and update encryption schemes on fields that are ready. 4) Search, filters, and multi-field select options save you time, especially when you have several fields to manage. Cards at the top of the page show a summary of analyses and how much of your data is encrypted.”
Permissions and Access Management
Field Access Summary in Object Manager
Here’s a time-saver that admins have needed for a while. Summer ’26 introduces the Field Access Summary in Object Manager, which lets you review field-level security for a specific field across all profiles, permission sets, and permission set groups in a single view.
Previously, understanding field access meant navigating through individual profile and permission set pages, which is tedious at scale. Now, you can go to Object Manager, select an object, click Field Access in the sidebar, and select any field to see its full access configuration at a glance. Available in Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, Developer, and Database.com editions.
Queue Sharing Gets More Granular Control
Admins managing queues will appreciate a new setting that gives you more precise control over how records are shared. The new Grant Access Using Hierarchies setting lets you decide whether records shared with a queue are automatically visible to queue members’ superiors in the role hierarchy.
Previously, this was automatic and non-negotiable. Superiors always received access to queue records, which also meant email notifications they may not have needed. Now you can restrict access to only the actual queue members.
The setting is enabled by default on existing queues (preserving current behavior) and disabled by default on new queues. You can also set the org-level default for new queues via the Sharing Settings page. Individual queue settings can still be adjusted regardless of the org default.
List View Sharing Gets Its Own Permission
A new Manage Shared List Views user permission gives users the ability to share their personal list views with the roles, groups, and territories they belong to, without needing the broader Manage Public List Views permission.
The old setup created an all-or-nothing situation. If a user needed to share a list view, you had to grant them access to edit or delete any public list view in the org. That’s a lot of access for a narrow need. The new granular permission resolves this cleanly.
Require Unanimous Approval for Group Approval Steps
Flow Approvals now support requiring every member of a group to approve before an approval step moves forward. When unanimous approval is enabled, each group member gets their own approval work item and personalized email notification. If anyone rejects, the step is rejected. If everyone approves, it proceeds.
Previously, getting input from multiple stakeholders meant building a separate approval step for each person. Now multi-stakeholder reviews and compliance requirements can be managed within a single step, which is cleaner for both the admin building the process and the people moving through it.
To set it up, select “Require unanimous approval” when configuring the approval step. The Work Guide shows each approver their individual work item, while admins can track overall progress through a parent work item. One thing to plan for: approval work items can’t be reassigned in steps that require unanimous approval, so make sure your groups are configured correctly before enabling it.
Available in Lightning Experience for Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, Einstein 1, and Developer editions.
Reports and Dashboards
Apply Brand Color Palettes to Reports and Dashboards
Summer ’26 lets you apply your org’s brand color palette directly to report and dashboard charts, eliminating the manual work of updating colors across individual visualizations. Configure your brand palette once in your org’s theme settings and apply it consistently everywhere. Standardized, on-brand data visualizations across the org without the ongoing upkeep.
Add Two Row-Level Formulas to a Single Report
Reports now support up to two row-level formulas, up from one. That means you can calculate multiple values directly in the report without creating extra formula fields on the object. For example, commission rate and time-to-close in the same report, side by side. Less clutter in your data model, more insight without the extra setup.
Embed Custom Lightning Web Components in Dashboards (GA)
Custom Lightning Web Components can now be added directly into Lightning dashboards, moving from beta to generally available in Summer ’26. This opens up interactive, real-time data views that go beyond what standard dashboard components can do. Think waterfall charts or other visualizations that don’t exist natively in Salesforce. Users can filter, explore, and act on data without leaving the dashboard.
Conclusion
Summer ’26 is a well-rounded release for general admins, with meaningful improvements across accessibility, security, permissions, and org setup. The Chatter default change and the new Slack panel reflect Salesforce’s continued push toward deeper Slack integration as the default collaboration layer. The WCAG accessibility updates represent an ongoing, multi-release commitment that admins in any org should begin enabling and testing now rather than waiting for enforcement.
As always, the best approach is to get into your sandbox preview environment (available May 8) and test the updates most relevant to your org before they land in production. Review your Release Updates in Setup, check your queue configurations, and audit your list view permissions. Summer ’26 rewards the prepared.
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